by Diana Palmer
She took their order and left. Across the restaurant, Bess was giggling. Jessica looked at Sterling McCallum and knew in that moment that she loved him. She also knew that she could never marry him. He might not realize it now, but he’d want children one day. He was the sort of man who needed children to love and take care of. He’d make a good husband. Of course, marriage was obviously the last thing on his mind at the moment.
“Good God, woman,” he muttered, shaking his head with indulgent amusement. “Will you just let me finish a sentence before you react like that? I don’t have plans to ravish you. Okay? Now, move that glass aside before we have another mishap.”
“I’m sorry. I’m just all thumbs.”
“And I keep putting my foot in my mouth,” he said ruefully. “What I was going to say, before the great water glass flood,” he added with a grin at her flush, “was that it’s time I started going out more. I like you. We’ll keep it low-key.”
She looked at the big, lean hand holding hers so gently. Her fingers moved over the back of it, tracing, savoring its strength and masculinity. “I like your hands,” she said absently. “They’re very sensitive, for such masculine ones.” She thought about how they might feel on bare, soft skin and her lips parted as she exhaled with unexpected force.
His thumb eased into the damp palm of her hand and began to caress it, making her heart race all over again. “Yours are beautiful,” he said, and the memory of how her hands felt on his chest was still in his gaze when he looked up.
She was holding her breath. She looked into his eyes, and neither of them smiled. It was like lightning striking. She could see what he was thinking. It was all there in his dark gaze—the need and the hunger and the ardent passion he felt for her.
“Uh, excuse me?”
They both looked up blankly as the waitress, smiling wryly, waited for them to move their hands so she could put the plates down.
“Sorry,” Sterling mumbled.
The waitress didn’t say a word, but her expression spoke volumes.
“I think we’re becoming obvious,” he remarked to Jessica as he picked up his fork, trying not to look around at the interested glances they were getting from Bess and Steve.
“Yes.” She sounded pained, and looked even more uncomfortable.
“Jessie?”
“Hmm?” She looked up.
He leaned forward. “I’m dying of frustrated passion here. Eat fast, could you?”
She burst out laughing. It broke the tension and got them through the rest of the meal.
But once he paid the check and they went out to the parking lot and got into the Bronco, he didn’t take her straight home. He drove a little way past the cabin and pulled down a long, dark trail into the woods.
He locked his door, unfastened his seatbelt and then reached across her wordlessly to lock her own door and release her seatbelt as well.
His eyes in the darkness held a faint glitter. She could feel the quick, harsh rush of his breath on her forehead. She didn’t protest. Her arms reached around his neck as he pulled her across his lap. When his mouth lowered, hers was ready, waiting.
They melted together, so hungry for each other that nothing else seemed to matter.
She’d never experienced kisses that weren’t complete in themselves. He made her want more, much more. Every soft stroke of his hands against her back was arousing, even through the layers of fabric. The brush of his lips on hers didn’t satisfy, it taunted and teased. He nibbled at the outside curves of her mouth with brief little touches that made her heart run wild. She clung to him, hoping that he might deepen the kiss on his own account, but he seemed to be waiting.
She reached up, finally, driven to the outskirts of desperation by the teasing that went on and on until she was taut as drawn rope with unsatisfied needs.
“Please!” she whispered brokenly, trying to pull his head down.
“It isn’t enough, is it?” he asked calmly. “I hoped it might not be. Open your mouth, Jessica,” he whispered against her lips as he shifted her even closer to his broad, warm chest. “And I’ll show you just how hungry a kiss can make you feel.”
It was devastating. She felt her breath become suspended, like her mind, as his lips fitted themselves to hers and began to move in slow, teasing touches that quickly grew harder and rougher and deeper. By the time his tongue probed at her lips, they opened eagerly for him. When his tongue went deep into her mouth, she arched up against him and groaned out loud.
Her response kindled a growing hunger in him. It had been a long time for him, and the helpless twisting motions of her breasts against him made him want to rip open her dress and take them in his hands and his mouth.
Without thinking of consequences, he made her open her mouth even farther under the crush of his, and his lean hand dropped to her bodice, teasing her breasts through the cloth until he felt the nipples become hard. Only then did he smooth the firm warmth of one and begin to caress it with his fingertips. When he caught the nipple deliberately in his thumb and forefinger, she cried out. He lifted his head to see why. As he’d suspected, it wasn’t out of fear or pain.
She lay there, just watching him as he caressed her. He increased the gentle pressure of his fingers and she gasped as she looked into his eyes. A slow flush spread over her high cheekbones in the dimly lit interior.
He didn’t say a word. He simply sat there, holding her and looking down into her shadowed eyes. It was hard to breathe. Her body was soft in his arms and that pretty burgundy dress had buttons down the front. His eyes went past the hand that now lay possessively on her breast and he calculated how easy it would be to open the buttons and bare her breasts to his hungry mouth. But she was trembling, and his body was getting quickly out of control. Besides that, it was too soon for that sort of intimacy. He had to give her time to get used to the idea before he tried to further their relationship. It was important not to frighten her so that she backed away from him.
He moved his hand up and pushed back her disheveled hair with a soft smile. “Sorry,” he murmured dryly. “I guess I let it go a little too far.”
“It was my fault, too. You’re…you’re very potent,” she said after a minute, feeling the swelling of her mouth from his hard kisses and the tingling of her breast where his hand had toyed with it. She still couldn’t imagine that she’d really let him do that. But, oddly, she didn’t feel embarrassed about it. It seemed somehow proper for McCallum to touch her like that, as if she belonged to him already.
He grinned at her expression. “You’re potent yourself. And that being the case, I think I’d better get you home.”
She fingered his collar. “Okay.” Her hands traced down to his tie and the top button of his shirt.
“No,” he said gently, staying her fingers. “I like having you touch me there too much,” he murmured dryly. “Let’s not tempt fate twice in one night.”
She was a little disappointed, even though she knew he was right. It was too soon. But her eyes mirrored more than one emotion.
He watched those expressions chase across her face, his eyes tender, full of secrets. “How did you get under my skin?” he wondered absently.
She glowed with pleasure. “Have I?”
“Right down to the bone, when I wasn’t looking. I don’t know if I like it.” He studied her for a long moment. “Trust comes hard to me. Don’t ever lie to me, Jessica,” he said unexpectedly. “I can forgive anything except that. I’ve been sold out once too often in the past. The scars go deep and they came from painful lessons. I can’t bear lies.”
She thought about being barren, and wondered if this would be the right time to tell him. But it wasn’t a lie, was it? It was a secret, one she would get around to, if it ever became necessary to tell him. But right now they were just dating, just friends. She was overreacting. She smiled. “Okay. I promise that I’ll never deliberately lie to you.” That got her around the difficult hurdle of her condition. She wasn’t lying. She just wasn’
t confessing. It was middle ground, and not really dishonest. Of course it wasn’t.
He let go of her hand and started the vehicle, turning on the lights. He glanced sideways at her as he pulled the Bronco out into the road and drove back to her cabin. She might be afraid, but there was desire in her as well. She wanted him. He had to keep that in mind and not give up hope.
He stopped at her front steps. “I want to take you out from time to time,” he said firmly. “We can go out to eat—as my budget allows,” he added with a grin, “and to movies. And I’d like to take you fishing and deer tracking with me this fall.”
“Oh, I’d enjoy that.” She looked surprised and delighted. The radiance of her face made her so stunning that he lost his train of thought for a minute.
He frowned. “Just don’t go shopping for wedding bands and putting announcements in the local paper,” he said firmly. He held up a hand when she started, flustered, to protest. “There’s no use arguing about it, my mind’s made up. I do know that you make wonderful homemade bread, and that’s a point in your favor, but you mustn’t rush me.”
Her eyes brightened with wicked pleasure. “Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, entering into the spirit of the thing. “I never try to rush men into marriage.”
He chuckled. “Okay. Now you stick to that. I don’t like most people,” he mused. “But I like you.”
“I like you, too.”
“In between hero worshipping me,” he added outrageously.
She looked him over with a long sigh. “Can I help it if you’re the stuff dreams are made of?”
“Pull the other one. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“That reminds me, there’s a young man in juvenile detention that I’d like you to talk to for me,” she said. “He’s on a rocky path. Maybe you can turn him around.”
He rolled his eyes upward. “Not again!”
“You know you don’t mind,” she chided. “I’ll phone you from the office tomorrow.”
“All right.” He watched her get out of the Bronco. “Lock your doors.”
His concern made her tingle. She grinned at him over her shoulder. “I always do. Thanks for supper.”
“I enjoyed it.”
“So did I.” She wanted to, but she didn’t look back as she unlocked the door. She was inside before she heard him drive off. She was sure that her feet didn’t touch the floor for the rest of the night. And her dreams were sweet.
In the days and weeks that followed, Jessica and McCallum saw a lot of one another. He kissed her, but it was always absently, tenderly. He’d drawn back from the intensity of the kisses they’d shared the first night he took her out. Now, they talked about things. They discovered much that they had in common, and life took on a new beauty for Jessica.
Just when she thought things couldn’t get any better, she walked into the Hip Hop Café and came face-to-face with a nightmare—Sam Jackson.
The sandy-haired man turned and looked at her with cold, contemptuous eyes. He was the brother of the man who’d attacked her and who had later been killed. He was shorter and stockier, but the heavy facial features and small eyes were much the same.
“Hello, Jessica Larson,” he said, blocking her path so that she was trapped between the wall and him. “I was passing through and thought I might look you up while I was in town. I wanted to see how my brother’s murderer was getting along.”
She clutched her purse in hands that trembled. She knew her face was white. Her eyes were huge as she looked at him with terror. He had been the most vocal person in court during the trial, making remarks about her and to her that still hurt.
“I didn’t kill your brother. It wasn’t my fault,” she insisted.
“If you hadn’t gone out there and meddled, it never would have happened,” he accused. His voice, like his eyes, was full of hate. “You killed him, all right.”
“He died in a car wreck,” she reminded him with as much poise as she could manage. “It was not my fault that he attacked me!” She carefully kept her voice down so that she wouldn’t be overheard.
“You went out there alone, knowing he’d be on his own because you’d tried to get his wife to leave him,” he returned. “A woman who goes to a man’s house by herself when he’s alone is asking for it.”
“I didn’t know that he was alone!”
“You wanted him. That’s why you convinced his wife to leave him.”
The man’s attitude hadn’t changed, it had only intensified. He’d been unable from the beginning to believe his brother could have beaten not only his wife, but his little girl as well. To keep from accepting the truth, he’d blamed it all on Jessica. His brother had been the most repulsive human being she’d ever known. She looked at him levelly. “That’s not true,” she corrected. “And you know it. You won’t admit it, but you know that your brother was on drugs and you know what he did because of it. You also know that I had nothing to do with his death.”
“Like hell you didn’t,” he said with venom. “You had him arrested! That damned trial destroyed my family, humiliated us beyond belief. Then you just walked away. You walked off and forgot the tragedy you’d caused!”
Her whole body clenched at the remembered agony. “I felt for all of you,” she argued. “I didn’t want to hurt you, but nothing I did was strictly on my own behalf. I wanted to help his daughter, your niece! Didn’t any of you think about her?”
He couldn’t speak for a minute. “He never meant to hurt her. He said so. Anyway, she’s all right,” he muttered. “Kids get over things.”
Her eyes looked straight into his. “No, they don’t get over things like that. Even I never got over what your brother did to me. I paid and I’m still paying.”
“Women like you are trash,” he said scornfully. “And before I’m through, everyone around here is going to know it.”
“What do you mean?”
He smiled. “I mean I’m going to stick around for a few days and let people know just what sort of social worker they’ve got here. Maybe during the last few years, some of them have forgotten….”
“If you try to start trouble—” she began.
“You’ll what?” he asked smugly. “Sue me for defamation of character? Go ahead. It took everything we had in legal fees to defend my brother. I don’t have any money. Sue me. You can’t get blood out of a rock.”
She tried to breathe normally, but couldn’t. “How is Clarisse?” she asked, mentioning the daughter of the man who’d assaulted her so many years before.
“She’s in college,” he said, “working her way through.”
“Is she all right?”
He shifted irritably. “I guess. We hear about her through a mutual cousin. She and her mother washed their hands of us years ago.”
Jessica didn’t say another word. She’d been planning to eat, but her appetite was gone.
“Excuse me, I have to get back to work,” she said. She turned around and left the café. She hardly felt anything all the way to her office. She’d honestly thought the past was dead. Now here it was again, staring her in the face. She’d done nothing wrong, but it seemed that she was doomed to pay over and over again for a crime that had been committed against her, not by her.
It was a cruel wind that had blown Sam Jackson into town, she thought bitterly. But if he was only passing through, perhaps he wouldn’t stay long. She’d stick close to the office for a couple of days, she decided, and not make a target of herself.
But that was easier said than done. Apparently Sam had found out where her office was, because he passed by it three times that day. The next morning, when Jessica went into work, it was to find him sitting in the Hip Hop Café where she usually had coffee. She went on to the office and asked Bess if she’d mind bringing her a coffee when she went across the street.
“Who is that fat man?” Bess asked when she came back. “Does he really know you?”
Jessica’s heart stopped. “Did he ask you about me?”
“Oh, no,” Bess said carelessly. She put a plastic cup of coffee in front of Jessica. “He didn’t say anything to me, but he was talking to some other people about you.” She hesitated, wondering if she should continue.
“Some people?” Jessica prompted.
“Sterling McCallum was one of them,” the caseworker added slowly.
Jessica didn’t have to ask if what the man had said was derogatory. It was obvious from the expression on her face that it was.
“He said his brother died because of you,” Bess continued reluctantly. “That you led him on and then threw him over after you’d gotten his wife out of the way.”
Jessica sat down heavily. “I see. So I’m a femme fatale.”
“Nobody who knows you would believe such a thing!” Bess scoffed. “He was a client, wasn’t he? Or rather, his brother was. Honest to God, Jessica, I knew there had to be some reason why you always insist that Candy and Brenda go out on cases together instead of alone. His brother was the reason, wasn’t he?”
Jessica nodded. “But that isn’t how he’s telling it. New people in the community might believe him, though,” she added, trying not to remember that several old-timers still believed that Jessica had been running after the man, too.
“Tell him to get lost,” the other woman said. “Or threaten to have him arrested for slander. I’ll bet McCallum would do it for you. After all, you two are looking cozy these days.”
“We’re just friends,” Jessica said with emphasis. “Nothing more. And Sterling might believe him. He’s been away from Whitehorn for a long time, and he doesn’t really know me very well.” She didn’t add that McCallum had such bad experiences in the past that it might be all too easy for him to believe what Sam Jackson was telling him. She was afraid of the damage that might be done to their fragile relationship.
“Don’t worry,” Bess was saying. “McCallum will give him his walking papers.”
“Do you think so?” Jessica took a sip of her coffee. “We’d better get to work.”