“So you dealt with his church’s legal affairs.”
“It was basic contract law. Nothing too challenging.” Jesse’s smile twisted, becoming cynical. “And then Anne Cotter was hired on as a producer—straight from a stint producing game shows, believe it or not—and we started seeing each other socially. That was all right with my father, too. Anne was a solid employee. The fact that we weren’t married bothered Dad, but he rationalized it by saying that, since we were both doing such indispensable work for G.C.E., God would forgive us for our sins. Anne viewed things that way, too. I seemed to be the only person who didn’t.”
“You wanted to marry her?”
“I wanted to live a consistent life, not a hypocritical one,” Jesse explained. “I’m glad I didn’t marry her; it would have been a lousy marriage. But I felt strange about our relationship. Obviously, my interpretation of right and wrong differed from Anne’s, and from my parents’, and from everyone else’s at Grace. I finally came to see that when I told my father I wanted to take a sabbatical from G.C.E. and work with the poor. He flew into a rage. So did Anne. They told me I was doing God’s work at G.C.E., and that was where God needed my talents.” He exhaled and smiled wryly. “And it occurred to me that the indigent might need me even more than God did.”
“So you quit God and signed up with New Haven Legal Assistance,” Robin summarized. It sounded stark when she put it like that, but she couldn’t rationalize his actions any other way. “It sounds as if you rejected God only because it was a way of rejecting your father.”
Jesse grunted a laugh. “I rejected God because I’m me,” he argued. “If God exists, and if he created me, then he created me to have the sort of personality that can’t accommodate God.”
Robin shook her head again. “It’s not that simple, Jesse. We all go through torture trying to separate ourselves from our parents. I had a real love-hate relationship with my father for most of his life. I loved him because he was my father, but I hated him because he was always putting his job and his country ahead of the needs of his family. My mother and I had our ups and downs, too. She used to drink too much, I told you that. It wasn’t until I grew up and developed some perspective that I could accept that she had a reason for drinking. It’s always hard to make the break with your parents, but it’s part of becoming an adult.” She smiled wistfully. “Sometimes, when I look at Philip, I wonder what it’s going to be like for him, how he’s going to rebel and cut his ties. I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I know something is. I don’t think there’s any way around it.”
“Maybe,” Jesse conceded. “Maybe that’s what my rebellion was all about. But when the man you’re trying to cut your ties with claims to have a direct line to God, it makes the cut a bit more complicated.”
“I’m sure it does.” Robin reached for Jesse’s hand again, and this time he rotated it to weave his fingers through hers. “Why didn’t you ever tell me about this before?” she asked.
“I told you about my work for G.C.E.”
“But not about your father.” Her gaze met Jesse’s and held it. He no longer looked pained. His eyes were lucid, returning her direct gaze, and his smile was genuine, no hint of sarcasm in it. “Are you ashamed of your father?” she asked.
“No, of course not.”
“Then what?”
His gaze remained locked with hers, unflinching. His mouth flexed as he searched for the right words, the right response. “Maybe I’m a little embarrassed that it took me thirty-four years to do what most people do when they turn twenty-one.”
“There’s no time limit on growing up,” Robin assured him. “Besides, growing up isn’t the same thing as rejecting your father. It only makes me sad to think that after all this, you’re left with so little. You haven’t got your family and you haven’t got any faith, either.”
“I have myself,” Jesse said, his tone subdued. “In the end, that’s all any of us ever have.”
Robin’s gaze broke from his. She turned to view the counter, where her rolling pin and cookie cutters still sat, a reminder of the fact that Philip was gone, that every other room in her house was empty, that she was alone. In the end, Philip had departed and all she had was herself.
Jesse’s fingers tightened on hers. Her head swung back to him, and she felt a sudden burst of warmth inside her. She wasn’t alone. “We have more than ourselves, Jesse,” she whispered, her face illuminated with joy at her epiphany. “We have each other.”
An unspoken communication passed between them, a tacit understanding of what existed between them—a bond, a friendship, a defense against solitude. Love.
Jesse stood, circled the table and pulled Robin to her feet. His lips covered hers and coaxed them apart, and he let his tongue tangle with hers. For a sweet moment, Robin’s identity seemed to blur with Jesse’s in the heat of their kiss. When Jesse drew back, his eyes were bright and clear, his smile hesitant but enraptured.
Without a word, Robin led him to the stairs and up. His fingers remained laced through hers, his hold unbreakable. Not until they had entered her bedroom did he release her. His hands rounded her shoulders and rotated her to face him. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
She peered up at him. She had never been more sure of anything in her life. She had known for a long time that she loved Jesse, and tonight she knew why. She knew that being with him was the way to stave off her loneliness, that his presence could give her life new meaning just when everything had begun to seem meaningless. She knew that taken separately, she and Jesse were two drifting souls, unsure of what to believe in, but that together, they could believe in each other, in us. She knew, finally, who Jesse was and why he meant so much to her. “I’m sure.”
His mouth found hers again, moving possessively. She knew, from his heat, his passion, his hunger, that he offered an answer to more than just the recent loneliness she’d been suffering from since Philip had decided to spend Christmas with Ray in Orlando. She’d been living with a different loneliness, one she’d endured for so long she was hardly conscious of it anymore. It had been a white noise, faint but always present, a constant sigh in her soul. From the day Ray had chosen a new job and abandoned their shared dream of creating a home, Robin had been alone.
That loneliness had been fading ever since Jesse had entered her life. His visits, his calls, his attentiveness and affection and blunt honesty... It wasn’t merely that she needed a man in her life. It was that she needed Jesse, a true friend, someone who cared, someone who mattered.
Tonight, she would have him. They would have each other.
His arms surrounded her, one ringing her waist and the other her shoulders. Her head fell back and he raveled his fingers through her hair as his tongue probed deeper. When her fingers groped for the buttons on his shirt, he groaned. “Do you know how much I want you?” he whispered hoarsely, sliding his hand beneath the ribbed edge of her sweater to stroke the skin of her back.
“Not as much as I want you,” she replied.
He groaned again, her words obviously arousing him. With a quick movement, he yanked her sweater upward. She lifted her arms, helping him to remove it. He snapped the clasp of her bra, which followed her sweater onto the floor.
His hands skimmed forward to caress her breasts. During her recent thoughts about renewing her sex life, she had wondered, with some worry, about how a man might react to the toll time and childbirth had taken on her body. Hers breasts weren’t firm and perky anymore. They were soft and small and aging, the breasts of a woman who had nursed a baby.
Yet with Jesse, she didn’t feel self-conscious about her body. His fingers danced across her flesh with almost reverential sensitivity, exploring the warm valley between her breasts, teasing her nipples. He backed up to the bed, pulling her with him, and lowered himself to sit. Then he brought his mouth to one nipple and sucked.
The friction of his tongue on her caused a sharp spasm of desire to rip through her. She gasped, reeling from the wonder
ful sensation, then once again attacked the buttons of his shirt. This time, Jesse offered his assistance in opening his shirt. Within an instant, it was gone.
His torso was hard and magnificently proportioned. Robin ran her hands across the sleek surface of his chest, celebrating its muscular contours, twirling through the fine dark hairs that curled enticingly across the upper half of his chest and then rising to the knotted ridges of his shoulders. She bowed to kiss the top of Jesse’s head, and he took her kiss as a cue to unfasten her jeans.
As soon as she was naked, he shed the rest of his own clothing. Then he urged her down onto the bed beside him, rolling her onto her back and running his hands the length of her compact body. “This is your last chance,” he murmured as he molded his palm to the curve of her hip. His lips grazed her chin, her throat. “I want you to be sure.”
Robin sighed brokenly. It wasn’t only the warmth of his mouth on her, the pressure of his fingers against her upper thigh, the erotic tug deep within her, anxious with longing. It was more than that that made her sure. She was sure of Jesse, sure that she knew him, that they needed each other, that this was right. She wove her fingers into his hair and stroked down to the nape of his neck, to the thick ridge of his shoulders. “I’m sure,” she said again.
“I...” He explored the underside of her jaw with his lips. He brushed kisses down the surface of her neck, along the arch of her collarbone. “I didn’t come here expecting this,” he murmured, his breath caressing her skin. “What I mean is...I didn’t bring anything with me.”
She laughed, from both surprise and gratitude. Jesse’s thoughtfulness and responsibility only made her love him even more. “It’s all right,” she said, her hands roaming along his back, following the chain of vertebrae to his waist. “I’m protected. I did assume something like this would happen, sooner or later.”
“Did you?” His fingers continued to roam down her leg, tracing a circle around her kneecap and then rising along her thigh again. “I didn’t.”
Robin’s eyes widened. “You didn’t?”
Jesse’s hand paused, and he raised himself to peer down at her. “I never assumed I’d find someone like you,” he explained. “I never assumed I’d find something this special.”
His compliment rendered Robin speechless. What Jesse said was true. When she’d stayed on the pill after her divorce, she’d done so figuring that sooner or later she’d wind up in bed with a man. But she hadn’t dared to dream that the man would be someone as special as Jesse.
She curved her hands around his head and pulled him down to her. Their lips fused in a ravenous kiss. The sheer force of it left Robin shifting impatiently beneath him, her body demanding to share in the intimacy her lips and tongue had experienced. The movement of her leg against his hand prompted him to set his fingers free on her thigh again, sketching a twisting line upward.
His fingers combed through the downy golden hair between her legs. When he found her, every muscle in her body tensed reflexively, then melted into his caress. She moaned, surrendering to the fluid pulsing inside her body, the damp rush of hunger for him.
Her hand slid between their chests and down over the taut stretch of his abdomen. He was already fully erect, and when she tightened her fingers around his swollen flesh he gasped. “Slow,” he pleaded on a broken breath, fighting to maintain his self-control. “It’s been so long for you. I don’t want to hurt you.”
Robin began to protest that he couldn’t hurt her, that at this point she doubted she could go slow anymore. But as his finger gently entered her, preparing her, the only sound she was able to make was a breathless cry of pleasure. Her body clenched around him, every nerve sparking crazily to vibrant life, every impulse centered on the need to have Jesse, all of him, to absorb him and surround him with herself, to deliver her soul to him. “Now,” she implored, guiding him fully onto her. “Please...”
He pulled his hand away and covered her body with his. His hips surged, pressing, invading, conquering. For a moment, he became still deep within her as he struggled to contain himself. Then he withdrew and thrust again, less wildly this time, allowing himself to savor the enveloping warmth of her body, the comforting warmth of her love.
Her legs twined around his, and her hands settled at the base of his spine, resisting him every time he drew back. Whenever his body left hers, she felt herself glimpsing her loneliness...and then he would return to her, plunging deeper, demanding more, and she believed she would never be alone again.
His pace increased, driving her to a pinnacle, pushing her to an instant of perfect unity with him. With a sigh, she surrendered to the deluge of throbbing sensation, the glorious pulses of completion rippling through her, transporting her, soothing her. It had been too long, much too long since she’d felt anything like this—and yet, she willingly would have waited even longer if she’d known that, ultimately, Jesse would be the man to bring her here.
He peaked as she did, his body wrenched by the force of his climax. Groaning, he sank into her arms and let her hold him. His heart thudded against her breast, and his breath was shallow and ragged. She wrapped her arms comfortingly around him, waiting for him to recover, wondering whether she herself ever would.
Eventually, his muscles relaxed. He propped himself up on his arms and gazed down at her. “Are you all right?” he asked in a hoarse whisper.
She answered by raising her head to kiss him. Then she nestled back into the pillow, overcome with resplendent weariness.
He brushed a few stray hairs from her cheeks. His gaze journeyed over her face, examining her, easily comprehending the bliss in her shimmering eyes and her contented smile. “Angel,” he breathed.
“What?” A vision of the lovely crystal angel she’d selected for him at Woodleigh’s flashed across her brain. How did he know what she’d gotten him for Christmas? Was he clairvoyant?
Grinning, he shook his head. “Nothing,” he murmured, rolling off her and gathering her into a snug embrace. “I was just thinking about how much I love you.”
Robin needed no further explanation for his cryptic remark. He loved her. Nothing else mattered.
***
NOTHING ELSE MATTERED until she woke up the next morning. Her clock buzzed its alarm through her skull, jolting her awake. She slammed her fist onto the button that silenced the clock, sat up, and looked around.
Jesse was gone. She knew she hadn’t dreamed the previous night’s rapture, because the pillow next to hers still bore the impression of his head, and the sheets were still warm on his side of the mattress. But whatever had happened last night, this morning she was alone.
Shaking her head, trying to ward off the sudden sense of emptiness that seeped through her, she stood and crossed to the closet to get her bathrobe. The house’s silence troubled her; she considered turning on the alarm again, just so she would hear something. Stepping into her slippers, she shuffled out of her bedroom, halted at the top of the stairs, and listened. Not a sound.
She knew she ought to go downstairs, but instead, she found herself walking to Philip’s bedroom. The door was open, and she stopped at the threshold to stare at the crisply made bed, the shut closet door, the clear surface of the desk, the shelves stacked neatly with books and toys that usually lay scattered across the floor. The unpleasant hush filling her house had as much to do with Philip’s absence as with Jesse’s unexplained disappearance. Right now, Philip ought to be bouncing on the bed, leaving smears of toothpaste on the bathroom sink, hollering at Robin to get moving so she wouldn’t be late for work.
Cheering about the impending arrival of Santa Claus.
Last night hadn’t changed a thing. The day before Christmas had arrived, and Philip was gone.
Robin felt a veil of gloom descend around her, cloaking her in its dreary weight. Sighing, she turned her back on Philip’s unnervingly tidy room and plodded down the stairs. At the foot of the staircase she caught a whiff of coffee. She followed its tempting scent to the kitchen.
“It’s a nice surprise, even if I’m out of bed,” she said with false cheer. Seeing him, remembering the ecstasy they had shared last night, recalling his confession of love...why couldn’t that dispel the doubt creeping over her?
Jesse loved her—that wasn’t what she doubted. Nor did she doubt that she felt strongly about him. But was it love that had drawn her to him yesterday, love that had lured them upstairs and into her bed? Or was it loneliness? Had she come to Jesse in the hope of affirming her love for him, or in the hope of distracting her from her misery?
He pulled out a chair for her at the table, and she slumped into it. “I’m an early riser,” he said apologetically, handing her a cup of coffee. “Something tells me you’re a bear in the morning.”
“Not always,” she mumbled, hiding her face behind the cup so Jesse wouldn’t see the torment and confusion in her eyes. “I’m not used to waking up to the alarm clock, that’s all. Usually Philip wakes me up.”
“Work today?” Jesse asked, sitting across from her and sipping his coffee.
Robin nodded.
Jesse lowered his cup and appraised her, his smile fading. “That bad, huh,” he murmured sympathetically. “If it makes you feel any better, I’ve got to go to work today, too.”
Comfort and Joy Page 20