After a moment he nodded, and she knew he’d realized what she meant.
“And don’t think I don’t see the irony,” she said wryly. “Honest, wonderful, consenting-adult sex could lose me the election to a too-twisted-to-live pervert.”
“Wonderful?” he said after a moment.
It was so normal, such a normal guy reaction, that she nearly laughed at the sudden burst of joy that filled her. “Beyond wonderful. Beyond my wildest dreams. But it wasn’t a surprise. I knew it would be like this, with you.”
“Didn’t know it could be. With anyone.”
The muttered words weren’t a declaration of love, but coming from him, they might as well have been.
And for the first time Jessa let herself hope that they had a chance to leave the past behind, except for the memories worth keeping.
A chance was all she wanted.
Jessa watched the boy and the dog, thinking it would be a joyous slice of Americana if the situation weren’t so dire. Tyler could still throw a ball with his right arm, and had been doing so delightedly for nearly fifteen minutes now, the tireless Maui finding it wherever it landed, frequently leaping over the big log that lay crossways in the middle of the yard, and romping back with it in an irresistible invitation to keep the game going.
“Try a fly ball, Tyler,” Jessa called to him. “But let him know first. Just wave the ball and say ‘up.’”
The boy gave an excited nod, and did as instructed. Maui’s body language immediately changed, and he backed off a few feet, eyes glued to the grubby ball the boy held. Tyler tossed it skyward. Maui positioned himself with the skill of an all-star right fielder, then launched himself in the same direction, catching the descending ball neatly in midair.
An excited yell broke from Tyler. Jessa smiled. And chided herself for not having done this long ago. She should have realized Tyler would need a haven, and provided it. It was simply the right thing to do.
It had been easy enough to learn what days Alden would be in River Mill by checking the hours posted at his office there. Over the past week she had made certain she—and Maui—were within the boy’s sight in the afternoons after school, and the urge of boy toward dog had done the rest. And she knew it wasn’t her imagination that the boy looked a bit less beaten down, acted a bit less skittish, at least around her and Maui.
The task she’d set herself had had another benefit as, needing the time for this, she had turned to her mother for help in the store. Her mother had responded as if she’d only needed a reason, and had come in to cover for her on these days. And to Jessa’s surprise, her mother had also taken to the new computer system with a surprising interest, learning quickly and not taking the least offense that this modernization her husband had always resisted had been done.
“It only makes sense,” she’d told her startled daughter. “And,” she added with a look that had made Jessa wonder if the huge change in her life wasn’t stamped across her forehead in neon ink, “it was remarkably generous of your Mr. St. John to do all this.”
It was Maui’s sudden veering off his track that warned her. The dog yelped happily and, ball still in his mouth, made a sharp right turn. And Jessa knew when she turned, she would see St. John approaching, as they’d planned.
They’d waited until Tyler had relaxed a bit, had gotten used to things. And while when the boy spotted St. John a wariness came over him, he didn’t run. Especially when Maui, after a bouncing greeting to St. John, came back to him to resume the game.
“Great dog,” St. John said, looking at the boy.
Tyler nodded, still wary.
“You remember my…friend?” Jessa asked Tyler, stumbling awkwardly over what exactly to call him, then choosing the easiest thing for a child. St. John gave her a look that told her he understood her hesitation perfectly, but agreed this was not the time to discuss exactly what he was to her.
Tyler nodded, giving St. John a furtive glance. “Don’t know your name, though.”
“St. John,” he said. Then, as if realizing that was a bit off for the boy to use, he said, sounding awkward in turn, “First name’s Dameron. Dam, for short.”
The boy blinked. “That’s a bad word.”
She saw St. John take a deep breath. She’d warned him the boy wasn’t going to be able to follow his cryptic conversational leaps, that real sentences were going to be necessary here.
“Do you think like you talk?” she’d asked him last night, when they’d decided today was the day he’d approach Tyler. “Is it in your mind like that, like machine-gun fire?” “No.”
He’d smiled, as if he realized the humor of the one-word answer to that question, and pulled her closer against him. She’d snuggled into his warmth in the twilight that came through the window of his room.
“Yes. I chose it,” St. John said now, in answer to the boy’s wide-eyed statement, “because my father always told me I was bad.”
Tyler blinked. “He did?”
“He told me I was stupid, disobedient and most of all not worthy of him, so I had to be punished.”
Tyler went pale. And very, very still. Jessa could read in his shocked eyes that Alden hadn’t changed his approach in the last two decades, that these were words this small boy had heard before, and often. Probably the exact words, if his stunned expression was anything to go by. Maui seemed to sense the change in mood, and dropped the ball, understanding the game was over.
“He used to do that to me,” St. John said, nodding at the cast on the boy’s arm. “And that,” he went on, reaching out and not quite touching the boy’s face near his now black-and-purple eyes. Tyler flinched, pulled back as if he’d made contact, but he didn’t run. Instead, his gaze was fastened on St. John with an intensity that mirrored, Jessa realized, St. John’s own.
She stepped back a few steps, until she was out of earshot, giving them the privacy the ugly subject needed. At her quiet finger snap Maui came to her side. She sat down on the fallen log, and the dog gave her a quick, tongue-swiping kiss before settling at her feet and turning his attention back to the man and the boy.
They were sitting on the grass now, and even from here she could see Tyler’s occasional shivers. She couldn’t hear what St. John was saying to him, and was childishly thankful for that; her imaginings had been bad enough, she didn’t want to listen to the details of the reality of what had happened to him. Yet she knew that would be what he would have to use to get through to the boy.
And she knew that he’d known it, from the moment they’d hatched this plan. He would confront his own demons for the sake of a boy he didn’t even know. And that told her everything she needed to know about the kind of man he’d become.
“I think he’ll come to us.”
He spoke after long, sated minutes of silence as they lay together in the fading afternoon light. In the place he’d never been but always tried to picture in his mind; Jessa’s room. Although she’d told him this hadn’t been her room then. When she’d come home after her father’s diagnosis, she’d moved into the large attic that ran the length of the house, to accommodate the things she’d acquired since she’d left home.
She’d arranged it cleverly, using the furniture to divide the big, oblong space into three areas: a desk and bookshelf area at one end, living in the middle, and a bedroom at the other end. A small bathroom had been added in one corner, making the suite comfortable and convenient. She’d used cool colors of green and blue in stripes and blocks in the bedding and curtains at the big windows at each end of the room, and a big area rug in matching tones covered a large expanse of the polished wood floor. Maui’s bed was on the floor, but St. John guessed from a couple of stray hairs he’d noticed on the blue comforter that the big dog spent most nights exactly where any male would want to be.
And he never in his life would have expected to end up here himself.
“Yes. You got through to him,” Jessa said quietly.
She was curled up against him, her head on his shoulder,
one hand lying on his chest. They were the first words she’d spoken since she’d urgently asked him to hurry in helping her rid herself of her clothes. Not that she’d been silent, not at all; his little blond pixie was a vocal lover, albeit not in words. And the sounds she made, and the way she trembled at his touch, nearly drove him mad.
To his own utter shock, it was he who had talked. He who had somehow found the words to string together to tell her how she made him feel. She’d brought him to life in a way he’d never thought possible. He’d long ago given up on ever feeling like this, and the fact that everyone around him at Redstone seemed to have found this kind of sweet madness hadn’t made him change his expectations.
“He will,” she said when he didn’t speak, and he told himself he was grateful she didn’t seem to require sweet nothings whispered in her ear, because he was sure he’d make a mess of that. Talking when he was driven to near madness with need for her was one thing, talking like a normal man in the exhausted aftermath of the most incredibly sweet experience of his life was something else.
St. John hoped she was right about Tyler. It had been one of the most difficult things he’d ever done, but he wasn’t used to failing at difficult things, and he most especially didn’t want to fail at this one. It had been wrenching, gut-twisting, to look at Tyler Alden and see himself. To see himself in the fear and betrayal reflected in the boy’s eyes. To see that fear turn to terror when he’d realized his stepfather was due home any moment, and they—and Maui—were still there.
They’d left quickly, reassuring the boy that they could handle his father, that they knew the nature of the enemy. St. John hadn’t told Tyler the final truth, that their enemies were indeed the same man, but he’d figured the boy had had enough for one day. Just knowing there was another kindred soul who understood was enough to process.
And now he knew. St. John had wondered if he could do it. But the moment he’d looked into Tyler’s haunted eyes, he knew he had to. There was no other option that would leave him able to sleep at night.
Besides, Jessa had asked him to. And that alone, to his amazement, would have been enough. Not just to make the effort to reach Tyler, but to do…just about anything.
Jessa. He drew in a shuddering breath. She shifted, sliding one long, silken leg over him, and he nearly gasped at the simple movement, and the shudder of sensation it sent through him.
They’d stolen these moments together before going back to the store. When they’d left Tyler, she had looked at him with an intensity and admiration that made him think he would literally die if he didn’t have her in the next moment. He’d grabbed her shoulders, stared down at her.
“Need you. Now.”
To his shock she’d said only, “Mom’s at the store. She’ll stay there until I come back. The house is empty.”
Questions had occurred to him, but were blasted out of his mind before he could ask by the fierce, almost violent reaction of a demanding body.
But now the main, the only real question hovered.
Jessa had been his salvation as a boy, he’d never denied that, never could. The memories were too precious, too clear. But the reality, here in his arms now, her naked body pressed against his, was even more precious, because it was so unexpected. And on some gut level he knew with a certainty that stunned him that she could be his salvation now.
If he wanted it.
Did he? He’d held himself apart for so long, used everything at hand, his ability to intimidate, his dark scowl, and the trademark way of talking—or not talking—to keep the world at a distance. Could he change that now? Did he even want to?
He lay still, betraying nothing of the battle raging in his mind. He had the odd thought that this must be what someone awakening from a coma felt like, bombarded with long unfelt sensations and thoughts, and reeling under the impact.
And his self-imposed coma had been nearly two decades long.
And then Jessa moved again, this time sliding her hand down from his chest until her palm lay flat on his belly. She was only exerting the slightest pressure, yet he felt as if every ounce of blood in his body was rushing to the site of her touch, as if that one point of contact was the only thing connecting him to…anything.
“I don’t know how to do this, Jess,” he whispered, the words ripped from somewhere so deep inside him he thought they must have left a bloody trail on their way to his lips.
For a moment she was silent, then she raised herself up on one elbow and looked at him.
“I’ll forgo the obvious retort to that, because I know that’s not what you mean. But just for the record, you certainly know how to do part of this, and magnificently well, thank you.”
Her voice was deadly serious, but there was a glint in her eyes that somehow eased the tension that had torn the confession from him. “You deserve…”
He floundered, not knowing where to begin to list all the perfect, wonderful things she deserved. And while he was many things, perfect and wonderful were nowhere on the list.
“To have what I want? Thank you. Got it.”
He hadn’t expected the humor. Hadn’t expected the pure, unadulterated joy that was shining in her face, that was washing over him as she smiled.
“Better,” he muttered, finally finishing his previous sentence.
“Yes, much, thanks again.” She didn’t even try to hide that she was deliberately misunderstanding him.
“You know what I mean.”
She sat up then. “Yes. I do. So isn’t it a good thing that’s not a decision you get to make?”
He stared at her, sitting there unabashedly naked, her nipples still taut from his mouth, and he was filled with a strange new emotion. Not the renewed lust he would have expected, although his body was certainly responding to the sight, but pride. Pride in her, at the strong, resilient woman she’d become, while losing none of her gentleness or tender heart.
“I need to go relieve Mom,” she said as she rose, gathered up the clothes he’d tossed and began to dress. He watched avidly. She knew it, he knew she did, but she didn’t seem to mind. After a moment he rose and reached for his own clothes, which had ended up strewn across the floor just as hers had. The memory of her urgency, of her hands frantically tugging at his shirt, the zipper of his jeans, nearly made him grab her and take her back to bed.
The thought made his hands shake slightly. He was out of control. He couldn’t deny it any longer. The hell of it was, if being in control, if the thing he’d prided himself on for all these years, meant doing without what he’d found with her, he didn’t want it back. But he had no choice.
“Dam?” She was there, beside him, and he hadn’t even noticed her move. But she didn’t touch him, as if she somehow knew he couldn’t bear it at this moment.
“Can’t risk this,” he whispered.
She studied him silently. “You’re not talking about ruining my election chances,” she said at last. “Jess—”
“It’s us you can’t risk. Me. Getting close.”
“Your sake,” he said, the words grating even to his own ears they were so harsh.
Hers, by contrast, went very soft. “Is that how you’ve spent all this time? Keeping people at bay, because of some idea you’ll…hurt them?”
“Never wanted them to know…to face…”
“The life you lived? My God, the fact that you survived is nothing short of a miracle.”
“Didn’t break me.”
“No, he didn’t. You were too strong.”
He shook his head, not feeling strong at all at the moment.
“You were. I can’t even begin to imagine the kind of strength it took to do what you did at fourteen. Which means you’re too strong to let what he did to you turn you into the same kind of monster he is.”
She turned and grabbed her shoes, a pair of slip-on mocs, and pulled them on. Then she headed for the stairs that led down to the second floor of the house she’d grown up in.
“I may be thirty years old, but I�
�m still my mom’s little girl, especially right now. If you’re still here when she gets back, the explaining is up to you.”
He gave the room one last glance, taking in every detail, filing it away. Then he started after her, not because he was afraid to face Naomi Hill, but because he didn’t want to cause her any more pain. And thinking that her daughter had gotten tangled up with somebody like him could do nothing else.
He’d barely noticed the house itself before. He had been inside a couple of times in the old life, back before he’d heard the talk about how wicked he was and had begun to stay away despite Jessa’s assurances her parents didn’t feel that way. He saw now it hadn’t changed a lot. Only the upstairs, Jessa’s domain, looked different, more up-to-date. He found himself comparing the floral-print sofa and the heavy, swagged draperies to the clean stripes and bold blocks of color Jessa had used.
Only then did he realize he’d studied her room so carefully because he wanted a place for her to be, in his mind, when he thought of her in the future.
And because he knew he’d never see it again.
Chapter 22
Jessa looked up as the bell above the door rang. A tall, lean man came in, and looked around with interest. He was dressed like a local, in jeans, a plaid shirt and well-worn cowboy boots, but she didn’t know him. Nor had she heard of any newcomers in town, news that usually traveled as fast as if they had that high-speed Internet she longed for.
She called out to the stranger, “If you need help finding anything, I’m the one to ask.”
“I’m lookin’,” the man said in a slow, easy drawl, “for Jessa Hill.”
“That would be me,” she said with a smile.
It occurred to her after she’d spoken that perhaps she should have been more cautious, that perhaps the rare visit of a complete stranger was another Alden machination, but one look into this man’s steady gray eyes made that impossible for her to believe.
The man studied her for a long, silent moment, and Jessa had the feeling, despite the laid-back demeanor presented by the drawl, she was being sized up by an expert.
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