In the largest bedroom, she stopped. The handsome pine four-poster bed had been left unmade. Elissa frowned. Why would the housekeeper, obviously efficient, leave a bed unmade? Jesse hadn’t returned here. Who, then, had slept in his bed?
She slowly ventured into the room. Traces of a familiar scent lingered. Jesse’s aftershave, she realized. The scent activated vivid memories of the night they’d shared, when the heat of their bodies had intensified the fragrance. That scent would be forever linked in her heart with raw, carnal passion.
Had it meant anything to him? Anything at all?
Drawn to the bed, she reverently ran her hand over the pillow, swearing she saw the indentation from where a head had rested. Could she feel a warmth there, too? Could she?
Nonsense. It had been more than a year since he’d been home.
“Jesse,” she whispered into the utter stillness, the name catching in her throat. “Jesse, oh, Jesse, why did you have to leave before I even had a chance to know you?”
And through the twilight silence of that bedchamber rang out a laugh—brief, wry, utterly familiar—mat spun her heart around and sent it plunging toward her toes.
“You have a pretty short memory, darlin” came the deep, hoarse drawl. “The way I remember it, you told me to get the hell out”
3
HE STOOD IN THE BEDROOM doorway, his night black hair tousled from either wind or sleep, his skin a golden umber from the Asian sun. His arms were crossed; one sinewy shoulder wedged against the jamb. He wore only loose-fitting military khaki pants, leaving his lean waist bare and his muscular chest covered with only a mat of dark curls. Although one corner of his mouth curved upward, no smile disturbed the cool silver of his eyes.
Shock drove the air out of Elissa’s lungs.
How could he be here? He couldn’t be. But there he was, standing half a room away, wearing a powerful, piercing stare. The same stare that had set her back an intimidated step when they’d parted company.
“Where’d you get the key to my house?” he demanded quietly. “And why? Did you think I wouldn’t let you in if you knocked?” His gaze held her—a gran- ite-hard gaze, yet oddly warming. “I would have let you in, Elissa. We have business to settle, you and L”
She tried to draw a breath, but couldn’t. It seemed her lungs had collapsed, or maybe just stopped functioning. She’d never fainted before, but dizziness threatened her now.
“Or was this your way of getting back at me for surprising you in your kitchen?” With a brief, mocking tilt of his head, his eyes grew even colder. “Touché. And I’m not even armed with a frying pan.”
She opened her mouth and drew in a tortured semblance of a breath, but it seemed to carry no oxygen. She caught at the bedpost as the room spun around her.
“You owe me an explanation, Elissa. Among other things.” Through a blue-tinged haze, she watched him approach, his eyes as fierce and dark as thunderclouds. “You wouldn’t let me see my son, and now I’ve caught you breaking and entering into my home.” The very air around her changed as he neared, vibrating with his animosity.
Instinctively, she cringed away from him and his tightly leashed anger. Still, that anger quavered through her like an electrical charge. Her gasp drew air into her lungs and, ironically enough, jump started them out of their paralysis. Clarity filtered back, and she managed to rasp, “Jesse!”
“You’re surprised to see me. Just what the hell were you planning to do here in my absence?”
She didn’t reply. How could she? She barely believed he stood there!
His anger visibly swelled. “Damn it, Elissa, tell me.”
But incredulity seeped in to take the place of her shock. “Jesse...is it really you? Oh, God. Jesse!” She reached out to touch his face.
Out of sheer reflex, he evaded her, flinching, as if she had thrown a punch.
“It was all a mistake,” she whispered in soft wonder. “The whole thing—a terrible mistake.”
Jesse frowned at that, and at the emotion glimmering in her sherry brown eyes. Was it...joy? Was she glad to see him? Foreboding filled his gut. “Is Cody okay?”
“Cody?” She sounded surprised to hear the name, or surprised that he remembered it. “Oh, yes, yes, Cody’s fine. He’s with my parents. But, you...” She held her hands open wide, and her gaze swept over him. The unexpected welcome in her eyes seared through the armor he’d built up against her. “We thought you were dead!”
“Dead?” He’d been prepared for just about anything but that. His brows drew together. “Who thought I was dead?”
“Everyone.”
Thunderstruck, he stared at her. “I’ve been called a lot of things, but ‘dead’ has never been one of them.”
Despite his sardonic tone, or maybe because of it, her expression grew more solemn. “I swear to you, Jesse, the military officially pronounced you dead.”
Her earnestness sent a shard of doubt through his certainty that she was, for some reason, bluffing. “Impossible. Why would they think I died after I successfully accomplished the mission? I returned to the base, and the brass promised me a promotion. Until then, I’m on a month’s leave.”
She planted a hand on one hip—a slim but rounded hip, he noticed. “I talked to Colonel Atkinson,” she said.
That shook the sureness right out of him. “Don’t be ridiculous. The colonel knows I’m not dead. He saw me off when I left the base.”
“Someone obviously made a mistake.”
A mistake. How could he argue with that? “Damned army,” he grumbled. Another screw-up to straighten out. Dead, of all things. It had just better not interfere with his pay, he swore, or he’d have someone’s head.
As she sank down onto the bed, which caused her slim black skirt to ride slightly above her crossed knees, Jesse strode to the bedside telephone. Elissa said with an open-palmed gesture, “I tried to tell them that I saw you after the plane crash, but...”
“Plane crash?” He paused with the receiver halfway to his ear.
“A transport crashed on its way to the States from the base where you were stationed. The colonel swore you were on that very plane. But you...you must have taken another.”
His frown deepened as he struggled to remember his flight home. A strange fog obscured much of the memory. He recalled saying goodbye to the colonel and boarding the transport, headed for the States.
And then...yes, there had been some kind of trouble. The pilot’s voice had come over the intercom. Something about an engine failing. The plane had rolled to the right, and nosed down into dive. But then what?
He couldn’t remember.
“Was there more than one flight headed for the States that morning?” Elissa queried. “There must have been. The colonel was simply confused about which one you boarded.”
Jesse didn’t reply. There hadn’t been any other flight. And he’d never known Colonel Atkinson to be confused.
“They supposedly used fingerprinting as the method to identify your...your—” Elissa paled “—to prove your death.” A visible shudder went through her. “But there’s always the possibility of human error.”
Decisively, Jesse dialed the colonel’s number. The foreboding in his chest worsened as he listened to the ringing at the other end. Why couldn’t he remember the finish of his trip home? If the plane had crashed, how had he gotten here? The questions rumbled through him as he waited for Colonel Atkinson’s phone to be answered.
On the third ring, the feminine voice of the colonel’s after-hours service answered. Jesse asked her to put through an emergency call to the colonel. She responded with, “Hello? May I help you?”
Impatient, he repeated, “This is Captain Jesse Garrett, and I need to make an emergency call—”
“Is anyone there?”
He gripped the phone tighter. “If you can’t hear me, I’ll try the call again. The connection must be bad.”
“Hello-o-o?” There was a resounding click as she disconnected.
W
ith a soft curse, Jesse dialed the long-distance operator, who answered promptly and clearly. But she couldn’t hear him, either. Frustrated, he dropped the receiver. “It’s probably this phone. I’ll try downstairs.”
Elissa accompanied him down the oak-railed stairway and into the living room. Even in his agitated state, he couldn’t help but watch as she kicked off her pumps and folded her mile-long legs beneath her on the sofa. Her gypsy-dark hair curled around her face, tendrils dancing free from the scarf tie. She lifted worried eyes to him.
He looked away as he dialed the phone on the end table. Her beauty infused him with a tension he didn’t need.
He waited, the receiver to his ear, and when the colonel’s answering service picked up, he muttered a few words, then halted. She still couldn’t hear him. Slowly, he hung up the phone. “The trouble must be in the lines.”
Elissa bit the corner of her full bottom lip; a teasing thing for her to do, as far as Jesse was concerned. “Let’s go use a phone somewhere else,” she suggested. Her voice was slightly throaty; a detail he hadn’t paid nearly enough attention to in his fantasies. “We have to talk to your family, too. They still think you’re dead.”
“My family.” He tried to keep the scorn out of his voice. Shoving fists into the pockets of his khakis, he ambled toward her. A sudden thought occurred. “Did they, by any chance, hold a funeral service for me?”
She nodded, her brown eyes glinting auburn. “Today.”
He dropped down onto the sofa beside her. “It seems I’ve developed a new talent.” Although he spoke with self-mockery, he’d learned enough about the human mind not to doubt its capabilities. Wouldn’t the military have a heyday if their training had endowed him with remote-wiewing skills? He wouldn’t doubt that it had. Their research and training was specifically aimed at stretching the limitations of his mind.
“I dreamed of a funeral,” he admitted slowly. His contemplative gaze cut to Elissa. “You were there. And you were wearing exactly what you have on now.” The spark of awe in her eyes told him she believed him. “And before that,” he recalled, more to himself now, “I had a premonition of danger. It lasted days...before my plane crashed.”
“But your plane didn’t crash. You had to have taken a different flight.” A tremor shook her otherwise reassuring voice. “Didn’t you?”
He didn’t answer. He had no answers, although he knew that rational ones existed. He was in no mood to search for them now.
Settling back against the sofa, he extended his bare arm along the seat behind her. A silky tendril brushed against his forearm, its color a few shades warmer than his own wiry black mop. He hadn’t noticed that about her before—the secret fires burning in every dark strand whenever the lamplight caught it. And he wasn’t sure if he had fully appreciated the creamy smoothness of her skin. Or the warmth and softness of her slender shoulders...
Jesse drew in a slow, steadying breath. His memory would return, he had no doubt. The telephone lines would clear. And this fiasco about his so-called death would resolve itself. But not tonight Nothing could be settled tonight
And he might never have Elissa to himself again.
Her scent, elegant and sensual, wafted to him from her hair, her skin. Gazing at her mouth, he remembered the taste of it-sweet and sultry and endlessly inviting. It had been so damned long since he’d kissed her.
He wanted to kiss her now.
The strength of the wanting stunned him. He’d felt the same the first time he’d laid eyes on her. All demure and proper, she was, socializing with Dean and his teacher friends. Too chaste and shy for a beast like Jesse. He had stalked her, anyway, with his eyes, with his wits, until he’d cornered her. But she was no one’s prey. She had turned on him with concealed weapons-well concealed, brought out privately for him—her warmth and sensuality. Lord, he had wanted her.
One short night with her had barely whetted his appetite. She had haunted him throughout the long brutal months that followed, even after his mission had ended. There’d been women at the base—slim young nurses, more than willing to give him a taste of the softness he’d been missing. But he’d had no appetite for them.
He’d wanted Elissa.
He allowed his gaze to play over her elegant features, reacquainting himself with every curve, every hollow. Hoarsely, he asked, “So...did you believe I’d died?”
Elissa tilted her face up to his, only partially surprised to find herself tucked in the warm curve of his bare arm and shoulder. He hadn’t lost his boldness, or the smooth, casual way he somehow always placed her in close physical proximity to him.
Thrilling with that proximity, she tried her best to reply in an unaffected voice, but a husky one answered, anyway. “When they first told me you were dead, I didn’t believe it. How could I? You’d been to my house that morning.” She glanced away from him with that memory, embarrassed by her treatment of him. “But when the military declared you legally dead—” She paused, unable to explain her feelings. Unwilling to explain them.
“What, then?” he probed. “What did you make of my visit?”
With his warm, fragrant breath stirring her hair and his strong body vibrantly close to hers, Elissa felt foolish for ever having given in to theories of deathbed telepathy. “I didn’t know what to make of it.”
He studied her for a long, unnerving moment “Is that why you nearly choked when you saw me tonight? You thought I was...a ghost?”
The last softiy spoken word sent a shiver up Elissa’s arms, beneath the sleeves of her suit jacket and thin silk blouse. “Of course not. I was just surprised to see you.”
Silence descended around them, thick and intimate.
“Why did you come here, Elissa? To my house.” The quiet question reverberated in the vast, stone-floored room.
“You bequeathed it to my son.”
“Our son.”
Elissa’s breath caught, and the old argument between them came rushing back, startling her. She had denied him access to Cody. Refuted his right to see his own son. She’d been wrong; she knew that now. Jesse had a God-given right to see the baby they’d made together. “Yes. Our son.”
“If you thought I was dead,” Jesse persisted, lifting a curl from beside her ear and slowly twisting it around one long, hard finger, “who were you talking to, upstairs in my bedroom...with your hand on my pillow?”
She felt her cheeks warm. “I was saying goodbye.”
He raised his brows, his eyes meeting hers. “To...?”
“To you.”
A mesmerizing fire lit in his eyes, and he asked in a low, gruff whisper, “Did you grieve for me, Elissa?”
She felt it then—the slow burning away of her emotional defenses. She had no business feeling so deeply tied to this man. She barely knew him. But she couldn’t lie, not when he’d caught her in such a telling gesture. “Yes,” she finally whispered. “I grieved for you.”
Some emotion flared deep within the quicksilver of his eyes, and she felt his hunger, strong and ever so seductive. “Then, you owe me, Elissa,” he softly growled. “You owe me a welcome home.”
His gaze forcibly held her as he lowered his mouth. Longing welled up within her. She wanted to kiss him. Wanted to indulge in the keen, sensual pleasure of his mouth, his hands, his hard, powerful body.
Alarmed, she realized she was doing it again, letting this mesmerizing stranger slip beyond her prudence and common sense—the few virtues she had left after their last explosive union.
“Jesse,,” she said in a panicked whispered, “I don’t think we should—”
“Then, don’t think,” he breathed.
And with slow deliberation, he brushed his mouth against hers—lightly, reverently—from one corner to the next, the contact a mere whisper of heat across her lips.
Elissa closed her eyes and thought she’d die from the pleasure. Erotic sensations washed through her in a heated torrent, leaving her trembling as it ebbed. Trembling, hot, and wanting more. If she had doubted at
all the proof of her eyes, there was no denying this. Jesse was back, and igniting a potent heat—with only the lightest of touches.
She opened her eyes, seeking him. He angled his head for another kiss, his gaze burning an unmistakable message. This would be no mere whisper.
Elissa parted her lips, ready for it. Ready to throw caution and hard lessons to the wind.
But a sudden sound jarred her. A chime. The doorbell.
“Jesse,” she whispered, half dazed, “someone’s here.”
“They’ll go away,” he muttered against her mouth.
The next sound disproved that theory. A key turned in the front door lock. “Ms. Sinclair, are you here?” rang out a woman’s cheery voice from the foyer.
Jesse’s eyes darkened with thwarted desire. Beneath his breath, he cursed. “Suzanne. My housekeeper.”
Still trembling from Jesse’s feather-light assault, Elissa managed to call out weakly, “Yeah, I’m here.”
A lanky blonde in a T-shirt and faded jeans approached them with a snap of chewing gum and a look of mild surprise. Elissa recognized her from Jesse’s funeral. “Oh, there you are,” she said. “I figured you were upstairs, since the light’s on up there. I’m Suzanne Hancock.”
Elissa’s cheeks blazed with embarrassment as she rose from the sofa. She felt as if the woman could easily divine the scope and nature of the tension so tangible between Jesse and her—the sexual need that had been whetted and then left brutally unfulfilled.
Mercifully unfulfilled, she corrected herself, her good sense slowly returning.
Jesse, meanwhile, shirtless and impossibly sexy, stood up and raked a frustrated hand through his unruly black locks as he ambled toward the shadows. When he turned back to face them, his mouth, eyes and wide-legged stance expressed unbridled annoyance.
Elissa stepped forward to break the awkwardness. “I’m Elissa Sinclair. It’s good to meet you.”
“Looks like I caught you napping,” Suzanne said with a grin. “Sorry if I woke you.”
Elissa’s eyebrow quirked. She thought they’d been napping?
Possessing Elissa Page 4