by Lora Leigh
Jessie moved over to a nearby chair and sat down slowly, her stomach twisting with the sickening realization of the stress she must have placed on that friendship, that bond Slade and Jazz shared.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, holding back the tears that threatened once again.
“Sweet pea, you have no reason to be apologizin’.” He sighed as he bent in front of her, his large hand moving beneath her chin to tip her face up to his. “I offered. I made myself available, and I made sure none of those dumb pricks panting after you had a chance. You needed sugar, and I provided.” He smiled slowly, gently. “And I saved you for my brother, just like he would have done for me if the position had been reversed.”
“And you?” she whispered painfully. “You risked your friendship, someone important to you, to save me.”
“Naw.” He shook his head firmly. “I talked to Slade while he was gone, sweetheart. I knew how he was hurting, how he worried about you. How he wanted you happy. Slade’s a good guy, Jess. And that man loves you more than life. And he loves me. He knows who I held you for, and that’s all that matters to him.”
Jessie swallowed tightly. “I love you, Jazz,” she whispered, and knew it was true. It wasn’t a romantic love, or a sexual love. He was, next to Slade, one of the dearest people in her life though.
“Sweet pea, I love you too.” He leaned forward and kissed her check with all the affection of an older brother. “And everything’s going to be okay. I’ll let Slade know you’re home before he goes insane. Zack is gonna stay with little Cody and he’ll come to you…”
“No.” She shook her head fiercely as she moved to her feet.
“Jess, you can’t let him pace all night, worrying—”
“I have to go to him.” She swung to Jazz as he stood slowly, watching her quietly. “It’s my turn, Jazz. I have to go to Slade.”
His smile was warm, tender. “Maybe you’re right.” He finally nodded, then winked. “Take a shower first though, sweet pea. You’re pretty as a picture, but dried river water ain’t the nicest smell.”
“No.” Her nose wrinkled as she lifted the hem of her cover-up and sniffed. “It’s not the best smell.”
“I’ll head downstairs and keep answering his every-thirty-minute calls.” Jazz sighed as though put upon. “The things I do for you, beauty. Just the things I do.”
A smile tugged at her lips as he walked from the apartment to the symphony of his cell phone ringing imperatively.
“She ain’t home yet, dude.” His voice was muffled as the door closed. “Hang onto your breeches, I’ll let you know when she gets here…”
Chapter Twenty-one
Slade’s house was just as beautiful as it had been five years before. A two-story farmhouse with rough wood siding and a wrap-around porch, the masculine elegance and charm of the home had drawn her from the moment she had seen it.
He had cleaned it up a lot. It had been overgrown, the yard waist-high in weeds and grass. It was now well cut, the wood fence running around the perimeter glistened with a coat of dark brown stain that matched the house. It was a family house. The type of house meant to be filled with children’s laughter and the smell of fresh baked pies.
For now, it was quiet. Slade’s jeep was parked in the cemented driveway beside Zack’s pickup; the porch light was on, welcoming the coming nightfall, and through the open living-room shades she could see him pacing with the phone to his ear.
With her headlights turned off, and the sky just turning toward night, Jessie drove her gray compact into the driveway, parking beside Zack’s truck. She breathed out a hard sigh. This was hard. One of the hardest things she had ever done in her life. She was coming to Slade. No games, no pretenses as there had been that first time five years ago. She was coming to him, openly.
She was terrified. She knew he loved her. Slade wasn’t a man to play games and she had always known that, despite her attempts to hide from it or to tell herself otherwise.
It was pride. He had broken her heart when he walked out, but even then Jessie had known in the back of her mind that he wasn’t leaving because he wanted to. She had seen the grief in his eyes, the wild hunger and loss that had creased his face. But all she heard were the words, the rejection. And it was all she had let herself remember.
Drawing in a deep breath, she opened the car door and stepped out. The wide front door jerked open and Slade moved onto the porch. Jessie stopped by her car, shaking, trembling as his brooding stare locked on her, his expression shadowed in the dim light, his big body tense as Zack joined him.
Slapping Slade on the shoulder, Zack moved past him, his concerned gaze on Jessie as he moved to his pickup. Jessie closed the door of her car and met him as he crossed the driveway.
“You okay, sweetheart?” His voice was low as he stopped in front of her, his green eyes filled with worry.
“I’m fine.” She winced at the scratchiness of her voice, a product of the tears she had shed through the day.
She tucked her hands into her jeans as she glanced over his shoulder to where Slade watched them silently. “Is he okay?”
Zack looked back before turning to her again with a soft smile. “He and the boy are doing good, honey. You did good. How are you?”
She nodded slowly. “I’m good. But I have to talk to him now.”
The need to know was burning inside her, but the need for explanations wasn’t all that tore at her heart. She had to make certain the little boy, Cody, was okay.
“Good luck, sweetheart.” Zack pulled her to his chest, placed a kiss of the top of her head and then moved away.
Jessie kept her head down, fighting back more tears. Jazz and Zack had saved her after Slade had left. She hadn’t been mature enough, hadn’t guarded enough of her heart to pull herself out of the bleak pain that had suffused her. With her family gone there had been no one to go to, no one to ease the void that grew within her until they stepped in.
“Later, Zack,” she whispered at his truck door, and moved to the walk that led to Slade’s front porch.
He hadn’t spoken, he just watched her. In his eyes she saw the same pain that had raged there five years ago, the night he had walked out of her life and entered Amy’s. But this time, she also saw the love in them, the emotion, the certain way he looked at her that he never used with anyone else. The way he had looked at her since she was sixteen years old.
She stopped at the first step, staring up at him with her heart in her throat. He had every right to ask her to leave, to turn his back on her.
“Can I come in?” She stilled the trembling of her lips as she stood before him, uncertain what to say, what to do.
“It’s your house, Jessie.” He moved back, stepping aside as she moved up to the porch. “I’ve been worried about you.”
He didn’t touch her with anything but his eyes. Eyes that caressed her, that stole her breath.
“I needed to think.” She hunched her shoulders against his questioning look as he opened the front storm door and let her step inside. “About a lot of things.”
The inside of the house was as yet undecorated. A few pieces of furniture graced the living room, but the dining room was bare. The kitchen held appliances and a small wooden table.
She had never been inside his home, but as she stared around from the entryway, the wide-open rooms, sense of space—and waiting—struck her. It was a house waiting to be a home, with a small start already begun in the few toys she saw scattered around the living room.
Stepping into the room, she picked up the little stuffed bear, testing the softness of it before she laid it in the large plastic toy chest against the wall. There were several plastic trucks and cars, made for little hands, parked haphazardly against the front of the television. She picked those up as well.
As she laid them in the toy chest, she stared into the inside, feeling Slade close behind her, watching her.
“He’s just a little boy,” she whispered. “My mom always said boys were so
much harder to raise than girls. You have to teach them things young. Like putting away their toys and stuff.” She glanced back at him with a bittersweet smile. “I have a brother, you know. He doesn’t live around here. He’s in the service.”
“I know your brother, Jessie.” He tilted his head, watching her carefully. “He was very firm when he reminded me of your age before he went into the service.”
She looked back at him in surprise.
“You were sixteen.” His expression was somber, though his lips kicked up in a small grin. “He threatened to castrate me.”
“Yeah, that sounds like Benji.” She drew in a deep breath as she stood up and stared around the room before coming back to his gaze. “We need to talk, Slade. About five years ago. About Cody.” She turned back to him, pulling in a deep breath and stealing herself for the truth. “Was Amy pregnant with Cody when you married her?”
She watched as he drew in a deep, hard breath.
“I didn’t marry Amy because she was pregnant,” he finally answered. “I married Amy because she was my partner in a very sensitive operation we were involved in back in D.C. Amy and I were agents for the Office of Homeland Security, Jessie.”
She had to sit down. Jessie stumbled to a nearby chair before staring back at Slade in shock as he raked his fingers through his hair in frustration. His eyes were stormy with emotion as he moved over to the chair beside her. Jerking it from its position against the wall, he set it in front of her before sitting down, his gaze locked with hers.
“I was recruited first by the F.B.I. while I was in college.” He leaned closer to her, his hands hanging between his spread legs, close to her knees.
As she stared down at them, he moved his index finger, running it gently over her jean-clad knee.
“After 9/11, some of us were placed under the jurisdiction of the Office of Homeland Security. Amy and I were two of those agents. We were working undercover to infiltrate a group of arms dealers selling weapons in the Middle East. When I came home five years ago, it was after the operation had supposedly been dropped. We were getting nowhere.” He breathed out roughly, the sigh of air ruffling against the top of her head as her chest tightened with fear.
“What happened?”
He picked up her hand. Her fingers looked fragile, protected within his larger, stronger grip.
“The organization we were investigating had a ‘family values’ stand.” He snorted. “Amy and I had announced an engagement before the operation was stalled. We were told it was over. I came home. The weekend we spent together, Amy had received a message from the head of the organization. He wanted to host the wedding. We were being let in…” His fingers rubbed against her ring finger. “We had to go through with it. Pulling back then would have placed not just our own lives in danger but the lives of our families. Those we loved. It wasn’t a friendly organization if they thought you were screwing them around.” His voice roughened, the grief that had pierced her soul when he left echoed in it.
Jessie lifted her head, battling the tears she realized had begun to fall from her eyes.
“Jessie.” His expression twisted into a grimace of pain as his hands framed her face. “I loved you, baby. I loved you past everything I knew, but they had to come down. The weapons killing our men in the Middle East were being sold to them by Americans. That weighed enough on my conscience, but the men we were investigating had sent someone here to check us out, to watch us. I couldn’t risk everyone I loved. I couldn’t risk you.”
Jessie fought back the sob threatening to tear through her chest. Could she have done that? Could she have walked away from her own wants and needs to act so selflessly?
“Amy’s pregnancy?”
He shook his head wearily. “I was drunk, and she was desperate. She told me just before the operation went to hell that Cody wasn’t mine.” His lips twisted bitterly. “By then, it didn’t matter, Jessie. That’s my boy, blood or not.”
Jessie frowned. She had pictures of Slade when he was a child that her mother had taken while her father had been principal at Slade’s school. She wasn’t positive, but pretty certain there was no way Cody could belong to anyone else.
But where did that leave them now?
Slade watched Jessie shake her head before dropping it to her knees and breathing in roughly. She broke his heart—she made his heart beat. She breathed life into his soul and dreams of her were often all that kept him warm at night in the past five years.
What was he supposed to say to her now, he wondered. How was he supposed to make what he had done any easier for her to bear?
“I think I knew all along,” she whispered, her voice muffled as she kept her forehead pressed against her knees. “I just didn’t want to face it. I couldn’t let myself believe that you loved me, that you regretted leaving, even though I knew. I knew that night in Jazz’s RV wasn’t a dream. I knew it was killing you even then, just as much as it was me, but I couldn’t face it. If I had to face it, I couldn’t have lived.”
Slade swallowed tightly, feeling old, broken as he listened to her tear-filled voice.
“I had hope,” she whispered as he frowned down at her. “As long as I let myself believe it was because I was immature, too young, I had hope you’d come home, realize I had grown up and everything would be fixed. Then you came home. Amy was gone, and I couldn’t do anything. I was still terrified, still so uncertain. And I still loved you so much…” She lifted her head, staring back at him miserably. “But I couldn’t let go. Because if I let go then I had to admit the truth. And if I did that, then I would have to face betraying you…” Her voice broke, tears filling her eyes as he watched her in shock. “I would have to admit I betrayed that love…” A tear slipped free. “Even though I knew, all the way to my soul I knew you loved me, I still slept with Jazz, I let myself hate you…I had to hate you to survive…”
“God. Jessie, no…” He jumped from his chair, his hands gripping her forearms, pulling her roughly from her chair to stare down at her furiously. “Don’t you do this to yourself.” He shook her, gently. “Do you think I blame you? Do you think for a minute, baby, that I didn’t do what I did so you would hate me? So you could go on?” His throat was tight with emotion, his chest aching with it. “I thought you were asleep when I came to Jazz’s RV. I didn’t even think you would know I was there. Baby, you didn’t do anything wrong.”
Her face spasmed as she fought to hold back her sobs. The tears trickled down her cheeks as she pushed away from him, wrapping her arms around her breasts.
“You were mine.” The snarl in her voice had him frowning, uncertain. “You were mine and she gave you the child I prayed for. She was bragging the week before that, that you were hers. That she would have you.” A bitter laugh left her lips. “God, I think I knew even then that somehow I was going to lose you. So I slipped into the RV and I hid in your bed, knowing you weren’t going to come to me. Knowing you would hide. I knew…” Her hands fell to her side, her fists clenching so tight they paled as Slade watched her, listened to her, the weight in his soul lifting with each word. “But you were mine!” She turned back to him, her expression fierce, her eyes glinting with anger now. “So I hid and I waited and I teased you into taking me, knowing…I knew what was coming and I still blamed you. I still hated you and like a goddamned baby I closed my eyes and jumped right into my own fucking misery rather than accepting it.”
God, she was going to be a handful. Slade stared back at her, hiding the joy exploding from his chest. Not because she had been miserable, not because he knew what he had suspected all along, that his sweet little Jessie had deliberately tried to seduce him, had lied about being asleep on the RV rather than admitting she had all intention of taking her man.
Hell no. His heart was beating; his entire being was freed knowing, seeing in her eyes the fierce, possessive streak of steel-strong devotion he felt for her.
He crossed his arms over his chest, frowning down at her as she met his gaze, the flames of
her anger warming him faster than a bonfire.
“So you set out to seduce me?” He kept his voice from revealing the complete pleasure tearing through him.
“You’re damned right I did,” she snapped, her brown eyes glittering fiercely. “I waited on you since I was sixteen years old and figured out how damned good a man’s hands could feel against my skin. Your hands, the night of my birthday when you danced with me. I felt your hands against my back, your fingers making those little moves on my skin like you were trying to get beneath it. You were aroused,” she accused him harshly. “You did everything to hide it but I know you were.”
God yes, she had been sweet sixteen and as sexy as hell. She had tempted him to a point that had almost terrified him. He thanked God when his vacation was up that summer, knowing if he didn’t get away from her, he was going to end up in jail. Because nothing would have stopped him from taking her.
She dashed at the tears on her cheeks, staring at him defensively as she drew in a deep breath, her top pressing against her breasts, daring him to rip it off her.
“So you just deliberately teased me all those years?” He lifted his brow.
God, he was going to paddle her bottom. She had no idea the hell she put him through.
“You and Jazz and Zack thought I was so innocent.” She rolled her eyes expressively, glaring at him. “I was a virgin, Slade, not stupid. I knew what a hard-on was and what it was for and I knew if my own fingers could make me feel good then yours would destroy me with pleasure. I wasn’t stupid. But I loved you.” The fury on her face almost made him step back. Damn, she looked like Rhonda before she got the frying pan out. “And you were fucking a path through three damned counties like a buck in heat,” she snarled. “I think I did hate you for that.”
