Loving Jessie

by Dallas Schulze

  “More than anything in the world.”

  “And what do you want me to do about it?” he asked in that same cool, emotionless voice.

  She blinked. Hadn’t she made it clear? Sifting back over her own words, she realized that she hadn’t actually said it outright. It had to be obvious what she’d meant. But maybe he wanted to be sure of what she was asking.

  “I wanted you to…” Jessie trailed off, feeling color creeping up from her throat into her face. It hadn’t seemed like such a…personal request until she was forced to try and put it into words. “I thought we could… I haven’t worked out the details yet, but you and I would… I mean, we…”

  Her voice trailed off as Matt reached out to set the brandy snifter carefully on the coffee table. He finally raised his head and looked at her, but his face was still in shadow, his expression unreadable.

  “You’re asking me to knock you up?” he asked, almost casually.

  The crude phrase stung, and her flush deepened, her face burning with the heat. “I wouldn’t put it that way, exactly,” she got out after a moment, her voice strangled with embarrassment.

  “Then how—exactly—would you put it?” he asked, politely inquiring. “Maybe you’d prefer a more poetic term. Should I have asked if you wanted me to get you with child? Put a bun in your oven?”

  Jessie wasn’t fooled by his light tone. She edged back on the sofa, suddenly uneasy.

  “Well, yes. Sort of. I didn’t think of it quite that way,” she muttered.

  “You didn’t think of it that way?” Matt stood abruptly, coiled violence in the move. “Did you think at all?”

  Looking up at him, Jessie sucked in a quick, half-frightened breath at the anger that blazed in his eyes. Though the width of the coffee table was between them, he seemed to loom over her. Large and male and very, very angry. She’d never seen Matt lose his temper, and she was suddenly acutely aware that she didn’t want to see him lose it.

  “I just—”

  “What in the holy hell made you think I’d agree to something like this?” He spun away from her as if he couldn’t bear to look at her another second. “Jesus, Jessie, we’ve never been anything but friends. Why would you think I’d be willing to—” Matt broke off, unable to say the words. For a moment he’d sounded more bewildered than angry.

  “Well, we…the way you kissed me the other night, I thought—”

  He spun toward her, his expression so fierce that she pressed her back against the sofa as if she could somehow disappear into the pretty blue floral upholstery.

  “A kiss?” he said incredulously. “That’s what gave you this insane idea? I kissed you, and you figured the next step was me getting you pregnant?”

  “No. Yes. Not just that,” she said defensively. “I’d been thinking about it for quite a while, wondering how to go about it, and then you came home and, well, I just thought…” Jessie’s voice trailed off miserably. This had all seemed so much more reasonable before she’d actually said the words out loud.

  “You just thought I was the kind of man who’d be willing to get a woman pregnant and then casually walk away from his own child?” In a heartbeat, his anger shifted from white hot to ice cold.

  Jessie stared up at him, her eyes blank with shock. She’d never looked beyond the fact that she wanted a child, never given so much as a thought to what would happen afterward, to how he might feel about fathering a child.

  “No, I didn’t think that at all,” she said truthfully. “Of course I wouldn’t expect you to walk away. I mean, you could see… Anytime you wanted. I wouldn’t try to keep you away.” She stumbled to a halt and closed her eyes for a moment, letting the full weight of her own stupidity sink in.

  How could she have been so blind? She’d never thought beyond the basic fact that she wanted a baby and Matt could give her one. In her dreams, she’d seen herself cradling her child in her arms, looked ahead to the first toddling steps, the first day of school, shuddered over the prospect of adolescence and even gotten a little teary-eyed about the sweet pain of seeing her son or daughter leave home in twenty years or so.

  She hadn’t thought at all about how he might feel about the child she was asking him to help her create. And if she’d thought about it, even for a second, she would have known that there was no way Matt could ever father a child and then not be a part of its life.

  Her clever idea had tumbled down around her head like a house of cards, but she could think about that later. For now, she was more concerned with repairing the damage she’d done tonight.

  Opening her eyes again, she looked at Matt. He was standing on the other side of the coffee table, his hands on his hips and his back to her, as if he couldn’t bear to look at her. She felt her heart tremble with fear. His friendship had been a constant in her life. It didn’t matter that years might pass between visits. She’d always known he was there. She didn’t want to lose that. She didn’t want to lose him.

  “Matt, I’m sorry.” The words sounded weak and inadequate to her own ears, but she had nothing better to offer. Rising, she moved around the coffee table until she stood beside him, waiting until he looked at her, trying not to flinch from the icy-blue fire of his eyes. “Matt, I’m sorry. It was a stupid idea. I didn’t think it out.”

  “No, you didn’t.” The words were as cold as his eyes.

  Her hand not quite steady, she reached out to touch the taut muscles of his arm, but he stepped back, out of her reach. The sharp movement, the utter rejection of it, stabbed her straight through the heart.

  Matt saw the hurt flare in her eyes, and there was a part of him that wanted to reach out to her, wanted to reassure her, but he didn’t trust himself to touch her. Not with this red-hot anger burning in his gut.

  “I’ve got to get out of here,” he said, taking another step back. There was a shimmer of tears in her eyes, a plea he couldn’t answer. Not right now. Without another word, he turned and walked out the door, feeling Jessie’s eyes on him every step of the way.

  Someone was knocking on the door. Not just knocking, but slamming their fist against it with solid rhythmic thumps. Gabe came awake reluctantly, squinting at the clock on the nightstand. Almost one o’clock. Who the hell would be knocking at one o’clock in the morning? Not knocking, he realized as the sleepy fog receded a bit. That thudding sound wasn’t knocking.

  Sitting up, he swung his legs off the bed and reached for the ratty gray sweatpants he’d tossed over the foot of the bed a few hours ago. Damned few hours ago, he thought, yawning widely. He shoved his fingers through his dark hair as he padded barefoot to the door. The thudding continued, pausing momentarily and then picking up again. He could almost feel the beat through the worn wooden floor beneath his feet.

  Obviously Matt was back from his dinner at Jessie’s and for some reason had decided that one o’clock in the morning was a good time to replenish the woodpile—a perfectly logical decision. Gabe pushed open the back door and stepped out onto the sagging porch. A full moon sailed high overhead, casting clear silvery light over the chaparral-covered hills. Closer to the house, the stark white glow of the halogen floodlight illuminated the area beyond the porch. Matt stood in the center of that pool of light, splitting wood with vicious concentration. The night was warm, and he’d stripped off his shirt, tossing it on the ground. Black denim rode low on his hips, and his torso gleamed with sweat.

  Gabe watched in silence as Matt set the wedge in place in a eucalyptus log, then picked up a sledgehammer and hefted it over his head before bringing it down with brutal force. He repeated the motion, and the wood split with a thin ripping sound that seemed loud in the late-night quiet. Watching his younger brother, he felt a sharp twisting pain in his chest. Even as a child, Matt had held his emotions close, particularly when he was in pain. Throughout the nightmare of their childhood, Gabe could count on the fingers of one hand the times he’d seen Matt cry. He’d built a wall inside that had held against the bite of their father’s belt and the vo
dka-scented oblivion of their mother’s indifference. Instead of tears, Matt had exorcised his demons on the football field or the track, pushing himself physically, as if he could sweat them out. Gabe wondered what demons he was battling tonight.

  He waited until Matt paused, the sledgehammer dangling against the side of his leg, his chest heaving with exertion, the sound of his ragged breathing clearly audible.

  “You know, most people just count sheep when they can’t sleep,” he said conversationally.

  Matt turned without surprise. “I’m not really in the mood for cute furry little creatures.” He brought his free hand up to probe the grinding ache in his wounded shoulder. Apparently, when his doctor had recommended moderate exercise, she hadn’t meant splitting wood with a twelve-pound sledgehammer. Suddenly aware that he was exhausted and in considerable pain, he let the hammer drop to the ground and bent to scoop up his shirt, wiping it across his sweaty torso.

  “Let me guess,” Gabe said. “Jessie made an extra-rich dessert and you’re worried that the calories will ruin your boyish figure.”

  “Not exactly.” The mention of Jessie had his fingers knotting in the soft white cotton of the shirt.

  “You think we’re going to have a really cold winter?” Gabe suggested, arching one brow at the tumbled pile of wood.

  Matt shrugged, then winced when the movement pulled at his shoulder. He hoped he hadn’t done any real damage, but, at the moment, he couldn’t dredge up much concern. He walked up the steps and onto the porch, aware that Gabe was watching him, his eyes full of questions he wouldn’t ask. Which was good, because he had no intention of ever telling anyone about what had happened tonight.

  “Jessie wants a baby.” Matt had no idea where the words had come from. He didn’t want to talk about Jessie’s insane request. Didn’t want to think about it. Out the corner of his eye, he saw Gabe look at him, his brows raised in inquiry.

  “Oh?”

  “She wants me to be the father.”

  At another time he might have been amused to see his unflappable older brother’s jaw literally drop open, but his sense of humor wasn’t really in prime working order at the moment.

  “You want to run that by me again?” Gabe asked after a moment.

  “She wants me to play stud,” Matt said bluntly. “I guess I should be flattered.” He knotted his hands in the fabric of the shirt he held, twisting it viciously tight. “Hell, it’s practically a dream come true. I get her pregnant and then just walk away. Don’t get many offers like that these days.”

  Gabe shook his head slowly. “No, not very many.” He slanted his brother an unreadable glance. “You going to do it?”

  “What?” Matt’s head jerked around, his electric-blue eyes wide with shock. “Are you nuts? Do you think I could just walk away from Jessie if she was carrying my baby? Or walk away from my kid at all?”

  “No.” Gabe frowned at the peeling paint on the back door. “Of course, you could always make a counteroffer.”

  “A counteroffer? This isn’t a freaking corporate merger.” He heard threads pop as he pulled at the shirt wrapped around his hands. “She wants me to knock her up, goddammit!”

  “What do you want?”

  The quiet question caught Matt off guard. What did he want? Unbidden, the image of Jessie, swollen with his child, flashed through his mind. It was powerful and so completely unexpected that his breath caught in his throat.

  “I’ve known her since she was a kid,” he said, not sure if he meant it as a protest or a defense.

  “She’s not a kid anymore, Matt, and I saw the way you looked at her at the party.”

  “I didn’t look at her in any particular way,” Matt muttered.

  “And when Reilly was dancing with her, you looked like you wanted to deck him,” Gabe continued, gently ruthless.

  Remembering, Matt didn’t try to argue. “It wasn’t… appropriate,” he said, aware that the protest sounded embarrassingly prissy. But, dammit, it hadn’t been appropriate. What the hell right did Reilly have to put his hands all over Jessie, especially when she felt…well, whatever the hell she felt for him? He wondered what Gabe would say if he told him that Jessie was in love with another man, that she was offering her body to him when she’d already given her heart to his best friend?

  “So what are you suggesting?” he asked, turning his head to glare at his brother in the sharp glow of the halogen light. “You think I should give her what she wants? A baby? My baby?”

  “I don’t think you should do anything at all,” Gabe said, shaking his head. “I just think you should take a long, hard look at what you really want before you make any decisions.”

  “God, I hate it when you do that inscrutable philosopher routine,” Matt exploded. There was a rending tear, and he threw the ruined shirt out into the darkness.

  “You’re too goddamned tall to be Confucius. If you’ve got an opinion, just spit it out.”

  Gabe straightened away from the rail. “Sorry. My license as an inscrutable philosopher prohibits me from having an opinion.” He pulled open the screen door. “Just think about what you really want, Matt.”

  He went into the house, leaving Matt to glare at the closed door. Think about what he wanted? How the hell was he supposed to know what he wanted?

  Jessie slept poorly the night after her dinner with Matt. She couldn’t stop running their conversation through her head, going over every word, thinking of all the things she could have said, should have said. She had been so focused on what she wanted, on her desire to have a baby, that she hadn’t given any thought at all to how Matt might feel about the child they would create between them. It wasn’t the loss of her own dream that bothered her but the emotions she’d seen in Matt’s eyes. She hadn’t just made him angry, she’d hurt him.

  She was pale and heavy-eyed when she dragged herself out of bed. She showered, and pulled on a pair of pink shorts and a sleeveless white blouse in deference to the heat. Sackcloth and ashes would have better suited her mood, she thought, as she twisted her hair into a French braid. Just what was sackcloth, anyway? And what did you do with the ashes? It was the kind of question she might have asked Matt and he would have laughed and told her that she thought too much, and then, in a few days, he would have shown up with an answer that he’d tracked down in an encyclopedia or gotten someone at the news bureau to find for him. Which brought her full circle to Matt, she thought, her stomach hollowing with pain.

  Ordinarily she would have tidied the kitchen before she went to bed, no matter how late the hour, but last night she hadn’t been able to face the task after Matt left. This morning she welcomed the dirty dishes and cluttered counters. She only wished the rote tasks didn’t leave her so much room to think.

  Heartsick, she thought, as she loaded the dishwasher and washed the counters. She’d never really understood what the word meant, but that was what she’d felt when she watched Matt walk out the door—a sick aching in her heart. The last thing she’d meant to do was hurt him, but she’d managed to do a damn fine job of it nevertheless. She had to talk to him, had to try and make things right again, though she didn’t have a clue as to how to do it.

  With the counters cleared and the dishwasher humming, Jessie debated her next move. It was barely ten o’clock in the morning. She could put in some time in her grandfather’s garden. There was always work to be done, deadheading the roses, pulling weeds that had managed to find their way up through the mulch, checking the drip lines that provided water. But the temperature was already approaching eighty, too hot for working outside, and thinking about the rose gardens made her think about her grandfather’s book, which made her think about Matt. He hadn’t given her a decision on whether or not he would be willing to do the photography. Last night probably hadn’t provided much of an incentive for him to take the job on, she thought ruefully.

  And here she was thinking about Matt again. Maybe she should just drive out to his brother’s place and see him. Get it over with. The
thought of seeing him again set butterflies loose in her stomach. What would she say to him? What could she possibly say? Maybe she could tell him she’d been joking, she thought wildly. Or drunk. So what if she’d only had one glass of merlot with dinner? For all he knew, she could have spent the day tippling the Galliano that went into the cake.

  Sinking down at the kitchen table, she bent to rest her forehead on the cool oak surface and wondered if she could convince Matt that she hadn’t been here at all last night, that it had really been her evil twin who’d asked him to get her pregnant.

  The melodic chime of the doorbell was a welcome distraction. It was probably Mrs. Felderman from next door, come to complain about the trash truck arriving too early or too late, or about something the government had or hadn’t done. Mrs. Felderman lived to complain. For years Jessie had made it a policy to avoid the old woman as much as possible, but this morning her complaints might provide a welcome distraction, she thought, as she pulled open the door.

  “Matt.” His name came out on a squeak, and Jessie cleared her throat and tried for a more normal tone. “Matt.”

  “Jessie.”

  He didn’t smile but simply stood there looking at her, his eyes shadowed and unreadable. He was wearing faded black jeans and a blue T-shirt that reflected the color of his eyes. She swallowed and made a conscious effort to loosen her grip on the door.

  “Would you like to come in?” The invitation seemed formal and stilted, but she could hardly offer him a casual hello and throw the door open. Not after last night.

  “Thanks.”

  The entryway seemed to shrink with his presence. She’d never been quite so aware of his size before. Or maybe it was her guilty conscience taking up extra space, she thought uneasily. She linked her hands together in front of her and fixed her eyes somewhere in the vicinity of his collarbone.

  “Can I…would you like a cup of coffee?” Sure, Jessie, it’s hotter than the hubs of hell out, so coffee is a really great idea.