Natural Attraction

by Marisa Carroll

  “Don’t be such a pessimist, Jess.”

  “I’m not, only practical. I didn’t bring an umbrella on this outing.”

  “It’s not going to rain,” Mark pontificated.

  “So now you’re a weather sage on top of all your other abilities.” Jessie made her tone as sarcastic as she could manage.

  “I’m a natural wonder,” Mark admitted with great modesty and a theatrical flourish of his hand. He loved to make Jessie laugh. It had been another good day. They’d talked about everything under the sun. They discussed politics, on which they disagreed. Jessie was decidedly more conservative in her outlook than he. It would make for interesting conversations come the next presidential primary.

  Over lunch they’d discussed the playoff chances of the New England Patriots in the upcoming season. Mark was surprised to find Jessie liked football and was knowledgeable about the game. Jessie was surprised he’d let his chauvinistic leanings show by even mentioning the fact and told him so. And with Hershey bars smuggled over by Nell and bargained for by her mother as their dessert, they’d come to the satisfying conclusion that either of them could do a better job with the economy and the budget deficit than anyone in Washington, if only they had the chance.

  Yet they’d been equally happy to be silent, listening to the wind and the sound of the sea, the calls of high-flying gulls riding thermal currents till they were specks in the far blue of the sky, drinking in the stark beauty of granite shores and the untamable sweep of the cold, gray Atlantic.

  They were becoming friends, Mark discovered happily. How good the words sounded echoing in his thoughts. He’d been alone so long he hadn’t even realized he was lonely—until Jessie and her girls set his well-ordered world on its ear. They were becoming friends. And friendship could lead anywhere.

  “Why do you do this, Mark?” Two fishing boats passed across her vision far out on the horizon. Closer in, a yacht under sail slipped gracefully along the swells making for Portsmouth or some other safe, snug port. Jesse sat down, reluctant to leave the island.

  “Do what, Jessie?” Mark prevaricated, dropping down beside her on the fern and grass-covered lip of rock. The crash of breakers on the far side of the small headland made Jessie strain to hear his quiet words.

  “This business of living off the land.” Jessie made a gesture that included the sea, the berries and shafts of wild strand wheat they’d gathered, and the island off in the distance where the girls were spending the day on their own.

  “To sell magazines, of course.” He grinned, stretching out on the sun-warmed ledge. “Lighten up.” It had become a joke between them, that phrase. This time Jessie didn’t respond. “You’re much too serious about this adventure, lady. I want you to enjoy yourself. I’ve told you that.”

  “I am enjoying myself.” That much was true. At least it was only a white lie. She did enjoy every minute she wasn’t worrying about how to deal with him. “I didn’t mean to be so serious. Bringing up three children alone tends to make you that way, I suppose,” she said candidly, then wished she had not. It came too close to voicing more of her private philosophies. She was liberated by necessity, not choice. He was so damned quick to take up on her moods he’d probably already divined that fact. “I’ll try to do better, sir. It’s a big responsibility.” The quip fluttered to the ground and fell flat on its face.

  “I’m aware of your responsibility and how you’ve handled it. I admire you for it. But it’s a fact you seldom let me forget. Don’t be so damned defensive about your girls.”

  “I’m not defensive. Am I? It’s just that…well, some days I get so angry at Carl for leaving me alone. As if he had any say in it.” She gave a rueful little shake of her head that was filled with the pain of loss.

  “It’s hard to understand and cope with,” Mark said gently. “Now you’ve given up on finding anything like you had with Carl. You must have loved him very much.”

  “I did love him. It’s sad to think there may not be any more men with his qualities left in the world, at least not for me. Now you know almost everything there is to know about me. Turnabout. Answer my question. You owe me.” Jessie hoped the painful residue of old grief wasn’t coming through in her voice. She thought she’d handled it all very well. It hadn’t been as difficult as she feared, telling him her very private hurts.

  Mark wasn’t about to let her know the agony showed quite plainly in her expressive eyes. “I’ve forgotten exactly what you asked me,” he sidestepped.

  No censure for her confession of maternal doubts was in his tone. There was no pity in his brilliant blue gaze, Jessie noted from beneath lowered lashes. Yet something flickered in the gold-shot depths of his eyes, something darker and far more meaningful.

  “I asked you why you brought us out here. To serve what purpose?” she reminded him.

  “To sell magazines, naturally.” He laughed at the awful pun as Jessie winced. He ran his hand over his jutting chin, contemplating his answer. His beard was thicker today. He really ought to shave.

  “You said that already.” Jessie looked mulish.

  “I did?”

  “Yes, besides, I don’t believe you do it just to sell magazines.”

  “You’ve never contradicted me so adamantly before, Jessie Meyer. I like it. No tiptoeing around my ego this time. I wondered when you’d show a taste of that skillfully concealed temper of yours.”

  Good grief! He knew she had a temper. Jessie stared down at her jeans-covered legs in confusion. She’d been so careful to keep it hidden. She’d been a model parent all week, and barely even raised her voice to the girls. How could he know?

  Mark laughed again, loud and heartily. “I listen to office gossip when it suits my purpose. Does that surprise you, Jessie? No doubt being the boss I don’t hear as much as you do.” Jessie didn’t remind him she spent very little time at Meanderings. She didn’t feel comfortable learning she was the occasional topic of conversation. His conversation. “You’d rather I didn’t know that about you, wouldn’t you, Jess?”

  “Yes,” she replied with candor. “And that was still one more nonanswer to my question. Why are we here?”

  Mark shrugged. Iron-hard muscles rippled under the soft, dense weave of his chambray shirt, distracting Jessie as effectively as his conversational red herrings. She pulled arched brows together as much to banish the image as to spur his confession. “I do it for the pure enjoyment of nature.”

  She looked stern, waiting. But she felt far more at ease now that the focus of attention was no longer herself.

  “More detail?” Mark looked up from his equally intense study of blades of grass. She nodded. “I want to prove man can live in harmony, nondestructively, with nature. I spent a lot of years building things to destroy or be destroyed. But while I was at it I also learned a lot about nature and what she provides us with. I want to make up a little for what I destroyed. I’d like to pass that knowledge on to others.”

  It evidently wasn’t all that easy for him to share his deeper feelings, either. Jessie liked that. She felt he had repaid her confidences with something of his own. “Go on,” she urged. “Why Meanderings—a regional magazine on its last legs? That’s about as far from the Army Corps of Engineers as you can get.”

  “You’re right, there.” Mark had suddenly become very interested in the fronds of a fern growing near his left elbow. “And New Hampshire is as far from the jungles of Southeast Asia and South America as you can get, too. I’ve spent most of the last twenty-five years of my life in that kind of climate, in the corps and later as a consultant for a Portuguese engineering firm. I wanted some place where the air is crisp and cool, where there are rocks and open sky and lots of clear running water.”

  “How did you meet old Mr. Peavy?” Jessie found herself being caught up in the unfolding story. It seemed so right, so natural to be sitting here listening to Mark, talking to Mark as if they’d known each other for years and years.

  “Hiking on the Appalachian Trail. He
’s a remarkable old coot. We got caught out together during a thunderstorm two years ago, sheltered in a dilapidated old sugarhouse. My sister had just moved to Portsmouth. I was visiting her and needed to get out on my own for a while. One thing led to another. He’s a persuasive old bastard, and before I knew it I’d agreed to buy Meanderings as an investment. Six months later he had me talked into running it myself and trying to make a success of it.” Mark shook his head as if he still couldn’t believe the selling job the crafty octogenarian had done on him. “It was the best move I ever made in my life.”

  “Even if it goes under and you lose your life savings?” Jessie couldn’t imagine herself taking such a gamble. But for Mark it was the kind of calculated risk he’d lived with all his life.

  “It won’t go under.” There was steel in his voice. No, it wouldn’t, Jessie realized. He wouldn’t let it happen. Warning signals screeched like air-raid sirens in her brain. How could she know that about him? For a woman as private as Jessie, it was a frightening prospect to be attuned to another human being so suddenly—frightening but exhilarating.

  Jessie abandoned the line of thought with a jerk that pulled her gaze level with Mark’s once again. He still watched her tenderly, absorbingly. Jessie jumped up, grabbing her berry bucket. She was disturbed by the strange yet familiar gleam in his eyes. Was it desire? Mark plucked at her pant leg, still stretched out in his prone position.

  As she hesitated her shadow disappeared from the ground beside him. Jessie stared at the spot as if she’d never witnessed the phenomenon before. She looked up to find the sun obscured by the bank of fast-moving rain clouds. Low on the horizon, fog followed in their wake. “We’d better go. You were wrong about the weather. I told you it’s going to rain.”

  “But I’m not wrong about us. Don’t be in such a hurry, Jess. There’s time.” She sank back to her knees, her aluminum pail rattling on the rocks.

  “The berries…I promised the girls a pie for supper. I don’t think there are enough….” She stuttered to a halt. Jessie knew she sounded as witless as a babbling brook.

  “I’ll help you with the pie. I want to be able to help you with everything.” Mark reached out slowly, hesitantly, imprisoning her face in his large capable hands. Her hat fell off, freeing the shoulder-length waves of her auburn hair. It spilled over his wrists. He buried his fingers in its softness. “I’d like very much to be there for you, Jessie.”

  His kiss was as gentle and restrained as before. Until she opened her mouth boldly to his probing tongue, inviting him within the secret places, pulling him out of control. “God, Jessie, don’t do this,” Mark groaned against her lips. “You’re ruining my battle plan. I don’t want to go too fast, scare you away. I knew this would happen if I took you in my arms again.” He pulled her down beside him on the hard, stony earth. Pebbles pushed into her hip; ferns tickled the back of her neck. Jessie didn’t mind the discomfort. She was too taken up with her own delighted response to his kiss.

  It was all that she wanted it to be—a kiss between a man and a woman. Jessie felt as if she’d grown a hundred feet tall, flown a million miles away, become a child at Christmas, a woman desired above all others. All were sensations she’d thought never to experience again in this life. She returned Mark’s kiss as tears prickled behind thick, spiky lashes. If he had asked, she couldn’t even have told him why she felt like crying.

  “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” he mumbled low in his throat. “I meant to go slowly, work my way into your confidence, your affection, not play the caveman on some desert island. I want us to be friends before we become lovers.”

  Friends before we become lovers. He sounded so positive of the fact. His hands had tangled themselves in her hair. Jessie luxuriated in the power of his strong fingers, the tangy smell of salt and sun on his skin, the brush of his beard along her jawline when he dipped his head to nuzzle at the golden stud earring.

  She let her fingers stroke over the soft curling hair at the nape of his neck. It was thick and fine as she’d known it would be. Jessie lost herself in the tactile exploration while Mark’s caressing fingers moved over her shoulders to the fullness of her breasts.

  “Jessie.” Her name was a hoarse groan of pleasure. “Such a contradiction, velvet on the outside, steel beneath. Demure and aloof for the world to see, smoldering and passionate here, with me alone.”

  “Shh, you talk too much,” Jessie whispered. His words were evocative and erotic. They undermined her equilibrium. She was determined to remain untouched emotionally despite the singing of her senses. This was nothing more than a lovely interlude between two mature, consenting adults. It wasn’t a prelude to a commitment. She couldn’t expect that; indeed, she didn’t even want to consider it. But it was so good, so right. She longed to be joined to Mark completely, to experience all the joys of her femininity with such a man.

  He had called her a contradiction but so was he. Outwardly decisive, dynamic, aggressive, yet beneath he was sensitive, caring and passionate in his own right. All the qualities Carl had possessed. All the qualities she admired and wanted in a man.

  Her breasts responded to the touch of Mark’s hands. The sun returned to feast on the glory of Jessie’s awakening passion as eagerly as his hands molded the soft curves. “You haven’t worn a bra since we got here, Jess. Are you doing it to drive me wild?” Two buttons parted, exposing the beginning rise of creamy skin.

  “No.” She meant to be emphatic, but the word sifted past her lips in a breathy sigh. “I’m not a tease. It’s your fault as much as mine.” She challenged him with eyes as dark as winter earth. “You made us leave Manchester in such a rush I forgot to pack my undergarments.”

  Bright flames kindled the gold flecks in his eyes. His laughter was a short, triumphant bark of amusement. “Hoist by my own petard. I was so set on talking you into this expedition that my impatience is my own undoing. Now I suppose you’ll tell me you aren’t even wearing a lacy little wisp of panties under your jeans?” One brow climbed toward his hairline.

  Jessie could barely string two words together coherently as his hands continued to mold to her form. His palms circled the straining globes with exciting roughness. She could feel her nipples harden in response to the stimulation of his caress.

  “I’m not wearing anything….” This wasn’t the staid everyday Jessie talking, that was for sure. Where had she gone? Where was she hiding?

  “Always truthful,” Mark mumbled, brushing her breasts with the rough stubble of beard on his chin. Desire roared through Jessie like a steam engine.

  “I think I’m beginning to enjoy it.” The woman who stretched among the ferns and brake of a deserted Atlantic island, the woman who moved with such ageless feminine grace in Mark’s arms, wasn’t the same hardworking CPA who’d left a drawerful of sensible cotton underwear back in Manchester four days ago. That Jessie would never have allowed herself to be seduced by her own passion. That Jessie would have retreated in confusion from such erotic give and take. “I may burn all my bras and panties when we get back.”

  “That’s guerrilla warfare, Jess. I never thought you’d stoop to such tactics. I planned this assault so carefully.” Mark looked down at her fumbling fingers as she parted the buttons of his shirt. Jessie concentrated fiercely on her task to keep the blood from rushing indiscriminately to her cheeks. She didn’t want him to guess how very new this role of aggressor really was for her. “I’ve made so many plans alone in my tent these past nights. Now you’ve blown it all sky-high. Ambushed me.”

  His mouth covered her mouth, and his body covered her body as he rolled his lean, strong length atop her.

  The brush of his hard-muscled chest against her soft, conforming curves drove all rational thought from Jessie’s brain. She’d been alone so long, been lonely so long. She needed someone to be with. A friend…and a lover. Her heart sang.

  She let her fingers trail across the rough, curly hair on his chest. Her palms fitted to the tapering V of his ribs and s
idled lower to the stiff, unnatural barrier of his belt. Reality collided with desire as their eyes met. Mark’s were as dark and liquid with passion as her own. “I want to touch you, Mark,” she whispered.

  “Do you, Jessie?” His voice sounded as hushed as hers even though they were cut off from other human beings. A fine tremor communicated itself from Jessie’s fingertips along his hand.

  “I think I do. I’m not sure. I haven’t done this for so long. It shouldn’t be so difficult. It isn’t any different….” But it was different, very different from being with Carl, her husband, the only man she’d ever loved.

  “God, Jessie, you’re so sweet and innocent.” Jessie sniffed scornfully but the continued stroking of his fingers along her nipples precluded speech. He switched the attention of his lips from her neck to her breasts. He sucked gently, the scratch of his beard on her skin threatening to send her plunging into a great glittering void of sensation.

  “Mark.” His name was a shadow on the wind. She wanted to tell him she was frightened of rediscovering the wonder of a man’s body. His passion was blatant, an exultation of her femininity. He was hard and smooth, tempered like fine steel, and she reveled in his nearness. But the fine trembling in her arms and legs wouldn’t stop.

  “I won’t rush you, Jessie.” The pale shadow of indecision, that tiny hint of fear, was back in her candid gaze. Her eyes were truly the mirror of her soul, the crystal ball that forecast her every emotion if one only made the effort to look into the reflecting depths.

  “I’m confused,” Jessie said. “It’s all happening so fast. I’m not very good at relationships anymore.”

  “Neither am I,” Mark admitted. “It’s just that you make me feel like a kid…a teenager with his best girl in the back of his old man’s Chevy. Remember?”

  “Yes, it was awful. Should I let him kiss me or will he think I’m fast? Better not, I might get lipstick on his shirt. Would his mother call mine if she found it? I don’t ever want to go back.” Jessie sighed, and the brief moment of amused remembrance broke the tension hovering between them like the rain clouds moving up quickly over the horizon.