Jax looked up at her.
“You’re not kidding, are you?” She was smiling at him.
Wordlessly he shook his head no.
“I can’t believe it.” She laughed again. “I mean, I do believe it, and wow! I’m so proud of you, T. You’re a writer, a real writer, an author. My God, Jayne Tyler is so good. I mean, you’re so good! Where did you learn to write like that?”
She was still smiling at him, her eyes sparkling with enthusiasm. She wasn’t angry. She was…proud of him? Jax fought the urge to lean across the table and kiss her.
“You’re not mad at me?” he asked.
Kelly shook her head. “No,” she said. “Well, maybe a little disappointed that you didn’t trust me enough to tell me before this.”
“I haven’t seen an awful lot of you since I started writing,” Jax pointed out. “This is the first time we’ve really had a chance to talk.”
“Uh-oh.” Sudden realization dawned. “This means I’m going to be working with you all summer, huh?”
Surrender. The word came immediately to mind as Kelly looked into the stormy gray-green of T.’s eyes. She’d only spent half a day with him, and already she was considering giving in. She could picture them working together during the day, taking breaks out in the sun on the beach, sharing a quiet, candlelit dinner like this every night and then going home to share T.’s bed. She could picture him kissing her. On the beach, in his office, in the car on the way home from dinner…With very little effort, she could picture them making love.
Kelly swallowed. There was a time not so very long ago when a summer like that would’ve been a dream come true. She had loved T. so much back then. She would have given herself to him for the summer, believing that the summer would last forever. But if there was one thing the past had taught her, it was that nothing lasted forever.
“Is the thought of working with me so terrible?” T. asked softly.
“No,” she said, meeting his eyes. It wasn’t. And that’s what alarmed her. God help her. If she was with him all the time, she might actually start to believe him when he said that he loved her, that he wanted to marry her. And if she started to believe him, God knows she’d only end up hurt.
Kelly said good-night to T. out in the hall, leaving him standing there as she went into her room and carefully locked the door behind her.
Surrender.
Instead, she kicked off her shoes, went into her bathroom and brushed her teeth. She pulled down the shades and stepped out of her dress, gently rubbing lotion onto her sunburned skin. The big T-shirt she slept in was still in her suitcase, so she rummaged for it, then put it on, wincing as it hit her shoulders.
When they got home from dinner, T. had found a note from Stefanie on the kitchen table. She had left on a cruise to Alaska with Emilio. She wouldn’t be back until the first week of August.
Kelly and T. Jackson were alone in this big house. It smelled like a setup, but Jackson swore he knew nothing about Stef’s plans.
Right.
As she went to pull the white spread off the big bed, she saw an envelope resting on one of the pillows. Curious, she picked it up. The flap wasn’t sealed, and she pulled out a single sheet of heavy bond paper and unfolded it.
It was a letter. From T. From his computer’s laser printer.
Dear Kelly,
If it were up to me, I’d be in there with you right now. Instead I’m sitting in my office, staring out the window at the night, burning for your touch.
I want you.
I want to feel your lips on mine, your body against me. I want to entangle myself with you, bury myself, lose myself in you.
It is such heaven and such hell having you close enough to touch—
But we’re playing by your rules.
So I’m not going to speak the words that are always on the tip of my tongue and constantly tell you how much I love you. I’m not going to show you how much by holding you in my arms and making love to you, the way I want to.
But I am going to write down the words I long to say, hoping that you’ll read them, giving me at least a fighting chance to win back your heart.
He had signed it with his bold handwriting. “I love you. Love, T.”
Kelly carefully folded the letter and put it back into the envelope. She turned off the light but lay awake for a long time before finally falling asleep.
Chapter 12
When Kelly got back from her morning run on the beach, T. Jackson wasn’t in the house. On her way into the kitchen, she glanced out the window and saw that his sports car was gone from the driveway.
There was an envelope with her name on it on the kitchen table and, drinking directly from a half full bottle of seltzer that she’d pulled from the refrigerator, she opened it.
Another of T.’s letters. Love letters, she guessed she could call them. Since she’d arrived over a week ago, he’d left at least a dozen of them around for her to read. She hadn’t even acknowledged them, and he certainly didn’t bring up the subject.
It was as if he were two very different people. One was the good old friend who was helping her rewrite her novel, helping her straighten out the problems with her hero’s motivation. The other was this ardent lover who had no shame when it came to writing his desires and passions, all of which involved her.
In this latest note, he described in extremely specific detail just how he wanted to kiss her when he returned home from the errands he was on.
Kelly felt her pulse increase as she read his words. It was scary to know that he was going to kiss her sometime today or tonight. Part of her was really looking forward to that kiss, and knowing that scared her even more.
As T. had promised that very first day, he broke all of her rules once a day, and only once a day. He would kiss her, tell her he loved her, ask her to marry him. She was never sure just when during the day that romantic attack was going to come. Several times it had happened first thing in the morning, but other days he had waited until afternoon or even after dinner. As a result, she was kept on edge almost all the time. And even after he kissed her, she found herself anticipating the next day’s onslaught.
She also looked forward to his letters. And as much as she realized he was using them to break down her resolve not to get involved with him, she couldn’t stop herself from reading them, sometimes over and over again.
Kelly took this latest letter back onto the deck with her and sat down on the steps as she finished the seltzer. Wow, it was going to be another megahot day. She wasn’t even going to bother to shower. At least not before she put on her bathing suit and went into the bay for a swim.
She leaned her head back against the banister, feeling the hot sun on her face. She needed to put more sunblock on, or her fair skin was going to burn again. She’d probably already sweated off the stuff she’d applied earlier this morning.
“Hey.”
Kelly jumped, opening her eyes and turning to see T. Jackson standing by the sliding glass doors into the living room.
“Morning,” he said. He already had on his neon-green bathing suit with an Amnesty International T-shirt on top. Don’t Discount The Power Of The Written Word his shirt proclaimed in large block print. Write A Letter, Save A Life. Kelly glanced down at the letter she still held in her hands. The power of the written word, indeed.
“I picked up some groceries.” T. looked at her over the top of his sunglasses. “Wanna help me unload the car?”
Kelly hauled herself to her feet. “Sure.”
He stepped back to let her go through the door first, and she glanced up nervously as she passed within inches of him. But his face was relaxed, he was smiling. She couldn’t see his eyes through the dark lenses of his sunglasses.
“How far did you run?” he asked.
“About three miles.” She took a detour to put the empty seltzer bottle and the letter down on the kitchen counter. God, she wished he would just kiss her and get it over with. “I’ve got to start getting up earlier,�
�� she added. “It’s getting too hot, even first thing in the morning. As soon as we’re done here, I’m going for a swim.”
Jackson pushed open the screen door and went out onto the driveway, where his car was parked.
The trunk was open wide and filled with cloth grocery bags. T. was environmentally correct. Somehow the realization didn’t surprise her.
“I got you a present,” he said.
“Fudge ripple ice cream?” Kelly lifted two of the bags out of the car and lugged them back toward the kitchen.
“I thought you outgrew that when you were fifteen.” Jax carried two bags in each hand.
“Yeah, well, I’ve regressed.” She tried to ignore the way the muscles in his arms and shoulders flexed as he almost effortlessly lifted the weight of all four bags up onto the kitchen table.
With an easy underhanded throw, he tossed her a small bag that bore the label of a local fashion boutique. “I bought you a new bathing suit.”
Kelly looked from the bag she had caught to Jackson and back to the bag. “If it fits in this little bag, something tells me I’m not going to be eating much fudge ripple ice cream in the near future.”
When she looked up again, T. was standing directly in front of her, and she knew from the look in his eyes that he was going to kiss her.
“Oh, T., yuck, I’m all sweaty.” She tried to sidle away from him along the edge of the kitchen counter.
But he put his hands against the countertop, one on either side of her, penning her in. “I want to marry you, remember? For richer or poorer, for better or for worse…I don’t think there’s an exception for sweaty.” With one finger, he caught a bead of perspiration that was dripping down past her ear. “Actually, it’s kind of a turn-on.”
Leaning forward, he smiled into her eyes and then he kissed her.
The bag with the bathing suit dropped to the floor as Kelly was surrounded by T. Jackson. His fingers left trails of fire where he touched her, his mouth met hers with a blaze of heat.
“Marry me, Kelly.” His breath was hot as he whispered into her ear.
But she pulled free of his arms, and this time he let her get away. “No. I’m sorry.” It was the same answer she’d given him every day since she’d arrived.
And just like every day, it didn’t faze him. Cheerfully he bent down and picked up the bag she’d dropped and handed it to her. With a smile, he went back to the car for another load of shopping bags.
How could he do it? Every day she wondered how he could kiss her like that one minute, then act as if everything were completely platonic the next. Kelly always felt as if she needed a few hours to recover.
She waited for her pulse to return to near normal, then slowly opened the bag. A bikini. Black and very tiny, although allegedly it was her size. She held it up, looking at it skeptically.
T. came back into the kitchen carrying the last of the groceries. “I figured you needed a new bathing suit,” he said as he started to unload the groceries. He looked at her and smiled. “That one-piece you have is on the verge of becoming transparent when it’s wet. Do you know they actually make bathing suits these days designed to do that?”
Kelly stuffed the bikini back into the bag. “You don’t really expect me to believe you, do you?”
“Scout’s honor. They were totally see-through. I saw ’em in a catalog. It was this amazing catalog with—”
“I meant about my bathing suit,” she interrupted. “It’s not that old.”
He looked up from loading liter bottles of seltzer into the refrigerator. “Hey, I’m not going to complain if you want to wear a see-through bathing suit, Kel. I just thought you might want to be warned. If you don’t believe me, try it on and step into the shower. You’ll see.”
Jax found Kelly in the office, hard at work. The windows were open wide and all the fans in the room were on and it was still hot.
“I thought you were going for a swim,” he said.
She didn’t look up from her computer. “I changed my mind and took a shower instead.”
He grinned. “You tried on your old bathing suit, and you found out that I was right.”
“All right. Fine.” Kelly turned around and sighed. “Go ahead and say it.”
“Say what?”
“I told you so.”
But he didn’t say anything. He just looked at her. Kelly quickly turned around. Damn. She knew she shouldn’t wear this halter top, but even the thought of putting on a T-shirt on a day this hot was too unbearable.
“I’m almost done with these revisions,” she announced, making her voice as businesslike as possible. “Actually, I am done, I’m just inputting the changes. It shouldn’t take more than an hour or two.”
“Good,” Jax said. “I haven’t worked on my novel all week. That’ll give me some time to touch base with my characters. After lunch we can work on fixing up your love scenes.”
Kelly cringed. “Do we have to?”
“Well, no. We don’t have to. But you’ll never sell your book if we don’t.”
“I guess when you put it that way…”
Jax sat at his computer, waiting the few seconds it took his word processing program to boot up. He popped in his Jared disk and quickly read through the last chapter that he’d written.
Jared was out in California, in Los Angeles. He’d bought himself a horse, a big black stallion, and he was riding out toward the ranch Carrie and her husband, Harlan, had bought nearly three years ago. He’d just found out that Harlan had died some months ago from a fever.
Jax started to write.
As Jared rode the trail, it was clear the entire area was having one hell of a drought. Dust rose up from the ground, covering his dark suit, making him cough. He tied his handkerchief around his mouth and nose, and pushed the wide brim of his hat down a little lower.
“Yo, so that’s Kelly, huh?” Jared said. “Lord, will you look at those legs! Oh, baby!”
“Shut up,” Jax muttered.
“I didn’t say anything,” Kelly said.
Jared laughed, his dark eyes sparkling with amusement. “This is great. Finally I can get the last word in. If you talk to me, Kelly’s gonna think you’re bonkers. And she’ll be right. Man, she’s beautiful. No wonder you’ve been so distracted. She’s hot. I bet you’re dying to kiss those shoulders—”
Jax scowled and started writing again.
He saw the dust kicked up by the running horses before he heard the familiar sound of their hooves on the hard-packed ground. Taking his rifle from the back of his saddle, he stuck the heels of his boots into his stallion’s sides. The beast reared up on his hind legs, then launched like a Chinese rocket.
Jared saw sunlight reflecting off the barrels of at least four guns as he glanced over his shoulder. Four horses, four riders, four guns. Damned if he knew what they wanted. Damned if he was going to find out.
They fired their first shot at him when he was within eyesight of the gate of the Double K ranch. Carrie’s ranch. The bullet zinged just over his head.
Jared took the turn in to the Double K at a dangerous speed, the big horse scrambling for a foothold in the loose dirt.
“There better be a good reason for this,” Jared shouted. “If this is just some kind of stupid punishment, I’m going to be very, very annoyed.”
“There’s a good reason for everything I do,” Jax muttered.
“Did you say something?” Kelly asked.
Jax looked up, meeting her inquisitive gaze. “Just arguing with my main character.”
“Ah.” She turned back to her own computer.
“I can’t believe you actually told her,” Jared said.
“She took that rather well,” Jax murmured.
Kelly laughed. “T., do you do this all the time?”
“Do what?”
“Talk to yourself?”
“Hah! See, now she thinks you’re nuts,” Jared said.
“Do you think I’m nuts?” Jax asked Kelly.
�
��Are you really having a conversation with your main character?” she countered.
“I’m afraid so,” he admitted. “Right now he’s on the back of a galloping horse, with four men chasing and shooting at him. He’s not very happy with me.”
“I don’t blame him. If you put me in that situation, I’d argue with you, too.” Kelly laughed. “Why don’t you stop arguing and just write the end of the scene, get him out of there?”
“Did you hear that?” Jax said to Jared. “Stop arguing.”
The stallion was still running like a demon out of hell as he approached the ranch house and the barn. With his rifle in his hand, Jared tried to rein in the big horse, even as he turned to double-check that the four gunmen hadn’t followed him this far.
A shot rang out, and Jared felt a tug of pain in his right arm. The rifle clattered onto the dry ground. Damn, he was bleeding and his arm hurt like the devil. He turned, trying to figure out where that gun had been fired from when a clear voice said, “Keep your hands up where I can see them.”
Jared nudged his horse, who obligingly turned to face the owner of both the voice and the gun. With his left hand, he swept his hat off of his head.
“Hello, Carrie,” he said.
Jax saved the job, cleared the screen, stood and stretched.
“I’m going to get a cup of coffee,” he said. “You want something?”
“Are you talking to me or your imaginary friend?” Kelly asked.
“Very funny,” Jax said.
“How’d you end that scene?” she asked.
“It was an obvious solution. I had the heroine shoot the hero.”
Kelly laughed. “Did it shut him up?”
“Not a chance.”
Kelly sat out on the deck, eating a salad for lunch. She heard the screen on the sliding door open and close, heard Jackson’s bare feet as he approached. The heavy wooden deck chair groaned slightly under his weight as he sat down, and there was a soft hiss of escaping carbonation as he opened a can of soda.
She glanced at him, and he smiled at her from behind his sunglasses. He’d taken off his T-shirt, and as she tried not to watch, he rubbed sunscreen onto his broad shoulders.
Letters to Kelly Page 16