by Arlene James
He followed her toward the back of the store. “Who’s Davy?”
She disappeared through a pair of silver swinging doors. “My youngest.”
“Ah.” He heard the twang of a metal clothes hanger as it bounced against the metal door. She was changing right on the other side of that thin barrier. That knowledge did strange things to various parts of his body. He turned away, glancing back toward the counter in the center of the store. The other clerk was watching him openly. Jack felt like a damned fool, standing there with his hands in his pockets, his ears straining for the slip and hiss of fabric moving over skin even as he told himself not to listen.
“I’d really like to go by the house,” she said, sounding as if she stood right next to him, “but the baby’s only thirty months. He’s still at that clingy stage, you know?”
“Thirty months,” he mused. “That’s two and a half years. That’s a toddler, not a baby.”
She pushed through the door wearing familiar pale green cotton pants and the matching pullover uniform top. Her white leather athletic shoes and a clean pair of socks were in her hands. She shoved them all at him. “Hold these, will you?”
He bobbled them, nearly dropped them on the floor. She snatched up the jeans and blouse she had been wearing and carefully draped them over the hanger. Only then did she say, “Yes, he’s a toddler, but he’s still my baby, probably the last one I’ll ever have.”
He heard himself asking a much too personal question. “Would you want another?”
She shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind, in the right situation.”
He would not ask her to define such a situation. It wasn’t any of his business. She started toward the front of the store, barefoot and carrying her clothes on the hanger. He hurried after her, her shoes and socks in his hand. She went behind the counter and collected her purse, then moved toward the front door.
“Have a good evening, Jason.”
“Yeah, you, too!”
She went out onto the sidewalk and hurried toward his car. He caught up with her in three long strides, inexplicably irritated. “Here. Let me help you.” He unlocked the passenger’s door, then opened the back one and reached for the hanger. She released it as she sunk down onto the seat.
“My shoes.”
He dropped them in her lap, hung the clothes over the back door and hurried around to get in behind the wheel. She turned sideways in her seat, brushing out her long, thick hair, her purse open on her lap, a rubber band clamped between her teeth. Quickly she gathered up her long hair and looped the rubber band around it. Jack started the car. She sat back and fastened her seat belt, then began dusting off her feet and putting on her socks.
“You work too much,” he said bluntly.
She smiled to herself. “I work as much as I have to.”
“You don’t get to see your kids a lot, do you?”
“Not nearly as much as I’d like.”
“Pretty tough life,” he commented tersely.
“To tell you the truth,” she said, “it’s better than everything that went before.”
That rocked him back. “It could be easier, though,” he said after a long moment.
She nodded. “Could be, but isn’t.” She tied one shoe and reached for the other. “In a few months, though, Davy will grow out of this clingy stage, and I’ll be able to stop by the house to check on them without causing a traumatic scene. In a few more years Davy will start school, and I won’t have to spend half my check every week on full-time child care.”
In a few months, he thought, in a few years. And such small consolations to look forward to. His hands tightened on the wheel.
“I could stop by and check on them if you like,” he said offhandedly.
She looked almost amused. “Why would you want to do that?”
For the life of him, he couldn’t have answered that. Finally he said, “Thought it might give you some peace of mind.”
She fluffed her bangs with her fingertips, watching him. “You’ve done more than enough already,” she said softly.
He shrugged, and they left it at that as he backed out the car and started it down the road. They pulled up in front of the nursing home a quarter hour later.
“What time do I pick you up?”
She just smiled. “No need. I’ve arranged another ride.”
He was surprised to find himself disappointed. “You didn’t have to do that.”
“Parkinson owes me. I filled in for her the other night.”
“Ah.” He reached for the door handle, but she stopped him with a hand on his forearm.
“Keep your seat. I can manage.” She promptly got out, retrieved her clothing from the back seat and bent to look at him through the opened door. “Thanks—again.”
Jack waved a hand negligently. Just then the door of the nursing home opened and a frail old man came tottering out onto the sidewalk. He waved a gnarled hand. “Heller! Heller!”
She looked his way, then flashed a smile at Jack. “Bye!” She straightened and closed the door, hurrying forward to throw an arm around the old man’s stooped shoulders. He peered up at her adoringly through thick bifocal lenses. She turned him deftly and steered him back toward the building, listening intently to his animated chatter.
All that strength, Jack thought, and compassion to spare. Yeah, one hell of a woman. He watched until she disappeared into the building, the old man still bending her ear with some story or bit of news. He was smiling when he put the car in motion, and he knew exactly where he was going next.
Heller jiggled the key in the lock, alternately pulling and pushing on the doorknob until the ancient mechanism moved into place and the lock released. She waved at the street, signaling to her ride, and opened the door. The television, which sat beneath the window in the wall opposite the door, was the first thing she noticed. It was on, but the sound had been turned down so low that the hum of the air conditioner in the right lower corner of the window had effectively drowned it out. That was odd. Not Betty’s style at all. Much too considerate.
Heller shook her head, dismissing the thought. She draped her clothing over the chair that sat at the end of the kitchen table, dropped her purse on the seat and moved across the room to the television. It was as she bent to reach for the power switch that she saw the reflection in the darkened window.
Not Betty. Much larger than Betty. Male. One foot hanging off the end of her couch, the other crammed into the corner, bending the leg at an awkward angle. Her heart in her throat, she skimmed her gaze up his body. He moved, sighing and rolling up onto his shoulder. She whirled around and looked straight into the sleeping face of Jackson Tyler.
For a long moment she could do nothing but stare, her mouth ajar. His hair had fallen forward over one eyebrow, lending him a boyish air, despite the darker mustache and the shadow of a beard. The television forgotten, she crept forward and reached out a hand as if to touch him and satisfy herself that he was real and there on her living room sofa. Suddenly, he sucked in a deep breath, flung an arm up over his head and opened his eyes. He blinked and smiled. “Hi.”
She plopped down in the middle of the floor and stared at him. “What are you doing here?”
He rubbed a hand over his face, cleared his throat and pushed up onto one elbow. “What time is it?”
She had to make herself think. “Uh, nearly two.”
He nodded as if that explained everything and yawned. “Sorry. Guess I fell asleep.”
“Where is Betty?” she asked more sharply than she had intended.
He folded an arm behind his head and looked at her. “I let her leave.”
“You let her leave,” she repeated blankly, and then she closed her eyes. She was too tired to deal with this, whatever it was, and she couldn’t begin to imagine what.
Jack said, “I didn’t have anything better to do, so I dropped by to check on things, you know, like we talked about, and when I got here, she was on the phone with a friend. Anyway, turns out her fri
end’s husband has walked out or something, and she was in crisis. So Betty asked if I could stay with the kids for a while, and I figured, why not? So I told her to go.”
“Boy, what a chump,” Heller teased. “If Betty’s friend is who I think it is, she and her husband split up every other week. It’s like this game they play.” She grinned. “But it was sweet of you to let her go.”
He smiled sheepishly. Heller laughed, then abruptly swallowed the sound. “Me and my big mouth!” she whispered. “I’ll be lucky if I didn’t wake all three of them.”
“I think they’re sound asleep,” he told her. “I just stuck my head inside the room earlier—didn’t want them to wake up and see some strange man standing over them—but they were all sleeping like little angels.”
Heller rolled her eyes. “Trust me, angels they are not.”
“Well, they look like angels,” Jack said, struggling into a sitting position, “especially Davy with all that curly hair, and the little girl.” He grimaced as he swung his legs off the couch, both hands going to his left knee.
Heller watched the muscles bunch in his jaw as he gritted his teeth and forgot about everything else. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing,” he said through his teeth, “just this stupid knee.”
“Nothing?” She moved forward, kneeling at his feet. Sweat popped out on his forehead, despite the fact that the air conditioner was blowing full blast right into his face. “You’re in pain.”
“My own fault,” he said, gritting his teeth. “I know better than to fall asleep on the couch. I always wind up in the wrong position, then the darn thing swells, and I spend the next two days eating aspirin and wearing ice packs.”
“Aspirin and ice pack,” she mumbled. “I can do that.”
She popped up and headed to the kitchen. He tried to wave her back with an uplifted hand. “Oh, hey, no. You don’t have to do that.”
She ignored him until he started trying to get up, at which point she whirled, pointed a finger at him and, with surprising fierceness, hissed, “Sit down right this minute!”
He gave her a surprised look and collapsed back onto the sofa. She began gathering ice cubes by the flickering light of the television and wrapping them in a tea towel. Then she took aspirin from the cabinet, filled a glass with water and carried everything back into the living room. Settling down on the floor in front of him again, she handed him the makeshift ice pack. He placed it gingerly on his knee. She took the top off the aspirin bottle and held it out to him. He opened one hand, and she shook tablets into it. He promptly slapped them into his mouth, tilted his head back and swallowed. She offered him the water, watching until he’d drained the glass. Then she leaned back on her elbows and gazed up at him.
“How’d you do that?”
“Hurt my knee? Playing football.”
“You played in college?”
He nodded. “Yep, then went into the pros.”
She lifted her eyebrows, pulling a face. “Really?”
He smirked. “Don’t be too impressed. I never made it onto the field, not even to sit on the bench.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing too unusual. I reported to training camp, like every other rookie, determined to prove my worth. Then during one of the scrimmages, I twisted a leg and took a hit at the same time. Popped my kneecap, busted bones, tore ligaments.”
“Bad, hmm?”
“I sure didn’t get up and walk away.”
She canted her head to one side. “What happened after that?”
He shrugged. “I went to the hospital for surgery and rehab. The team invoked a cancellation clause in my contract, paid my hospital bills and let me keep the signing bonus, such as it was, and that was that.”
End of a dream, she thought, just like that. She kept her face impassive, however, sensing that he would not welcome overt sympathy. “That must have been tough,” she said.
He shook his head. “Nah, the tough part came later.”
“How so?”
He cocked his head, looking down at her, as if trying to decide how much to tell. She knew when he decided to play it conservatively because his gaze skittered away. “You know how it is. Everybody’s expecting big things from you, and suddenly it’s obvious that those expectations are never going to be fulfilled.”
She considered that a moment and softly said, “I guess that shoe was always on my other foot. Seems like I was always the one with expectations.”
“In what way?”
She met his gaze evenly. Why not? She had nothing to hide. “Oh, for instance, I expected that marrying Carmody and having my own place would mean I’d have some say about what went on there.”
“But it didn’t?”
It was her turn to smirk. “Would my husband have brought his women home with him if I had?”
“Guess not.”
She shrugged. “Live and learn.”
He nodded. “Oh, yeah. Guess we all feel that way.”
The feeling of commonality lasted only as long as it took her to look around at her surroundings. “Speaking of expectations,” she said, just in case he was laboring under any false assumptions, “I really expected to finish high school and go on to college. Carmody even promised me that I could, but like all the rest of Carmody’s promises, he forgot it the minute after he said it. First, he wanted me to just lay out a semester, you know, spend that time with him. Then he had a chance to go on tour, but it meant I’d have to work for a little while. Then Cody came, and that was that.”
“It’s not too late, you know, Heller,” he said carefully. “You can get a G.E.D. and go on to college.”
She sighed. “Yeah, it sounds good, but…” She shrugged. “Actually, I got the G.E.D., but I don’t have the time, energy or money for college. Probably couldn’t get in, anyway.”
“Sure you could.”
“Doesn’t matter, though, does it?”
He said nothing to that, just sat there with her tea towel balanced on his knee. She looked at him, trying to gauge how he was feeling. “How’s that knee?”
“Better. Thanks.”
“No reason to be thanking me,” she said, getting up off the floor. “I’m the rescuee here. You’re the rescuer.”
He chuckled. “Think so?”
“Seems obvious to me.” She reached out a hand. “Let’s get you up and out of here. You’ve done your good deed for the day. In fact, I suspect you’ve passed your quota for the month. You can go home now.”
He closed his big hand around hers, his gaze direct and steady. “Maybe I don’t want to go home just yet.”
She skewed her gaze around skeptically. “It’s late, hero, and you need to put that knee to bed.”
He had the oddest look on his face, as if he was seeing something that wasn’t there, something that surprised and worried and intrigued him all at the same time. Before she could guess what it was about, he tugged on her hand. She stumbled forward and fell against him. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her down onto his lap. The next instant his mouth was on hers, his hand coming up to clasp the back of her neck, his arm bracing her back.
She was too stunned at first to make any response. Then his mouth softened, widened and pivoted against hers. His mustache brushed her skin, both soft and prickly. Electricity shot through her. Her breath retreated, seizing in her chest. Her eyes closed. Feeling blossomed in her breasts, swelling and hardening them. She melted. She had no defense against it.
He let go of her hand and brought his other arm around her, pulling her against his chest. She felt the thud of his heart, and her own answered it. His hands slid over her, warming, kneading, moving upward to cup her face and tilt her head, fitting her mouth more perfectly to his. His thumbs pressed lightly into the hollows of her cheeks, and she instinctively opened her mouth to him. He clasped an arm around her and pushed her head down onto his shoulder, moaning as he thrust his tongue into her mouth, his hand splayed against the side of her hea
d.
She felt that thrust all the way to her toes. She shoved her arms around his neck and sucked his tongue deeper into her mouth, absolutely mindless, excited beyond endurance. She could feel him in places he had never even touched, could imagine his heaviness filling her, pushing her down, enveloping her. His hand slid down her neck and across her chest to her breast. She convulsed, pressing herself against his palm, her lungs working like bellows now.
“Ma-ma!”
Davy’s shriek pierced the cocoon of desire and sensation they had spun about themselves. Clarity flooded Heller’s mind. Dear God! What was she doing? She fairly leapt off Jack’s lap, gaping at him, her body in turmoil. He looked as stunned and shaken as she felt. Davy screeched and collapsed into a bawling heap at her feet.
“Davy!” She stooped and caught him beneath the arms, hauling him up and onto her hip. “You climbed out of your crib again. I’m lowering the bed tomorrow so you can’t get over the rail. Don’t cry, sweetie. Mommy’s here. Hush now. That’s it, sweet boy.”
He stuck his fingers into his mouth, laid his head against her shoulder and snuffled, looking accusingly at Jack. Jack picked the ice pack up off the floor, where it had fallen, and placed it on the couch, then got to his feet, obviously favoring his left leg.
“I’d better go.”
She nodded and bounced Davy on her hip. She couldn’t have looked Jack in the eye if her life had depended on it. He limped to the door, opened it and ducked his head, but then he looked back over his shoulder. His gaze went directly to her mouth, then widened to encompass her face. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but he was breathing as hard as she was. He went out the door, closing it behind him.
Her legs immediately began to shake. She plopped down onto the couch and fell back against the cushions. Merciful heavens!
Davy began to cry again. She cuddled him and crooned until he hushed and relaxed and faded off to sleep. She kicked off her shoes and stretched out next to him, but she knew she wasn’t going to sleep, not for a while. Shock was holding exhaustion at bay, shock and something brand-new. The only term she could find to describe what she was feeling was feminine excitement.