by James, Sandy
Somewhere in the Michigan woods, I’d found a little slice of heaven.
CHAPTER TEN
It had been an awfully long time since someone woke me with kisses. Okay, it had actually been never. Mark was pressed against my side, slowly rubbing circles on my bare stomach while he tickled my face with soft kisses. How easy it would be to get used to this.
I smiled and rolled into his arms, still hardly believing I’d slept entirely nude. He pulled me closer and tried to kiss my lips. “I’ve got morning breath,” I whispered against his shoulder as I ducked his attention.
“So?”
“You don’t care?” Not only did I probably have funky breath, my short hair was surely standing up in fifteen different directions, especially considering how active we’d been the night before. The only time we hadn’t been naked was for a quick trip for food. When we got back to the cabin, we’d left a trail of clothes right back to the bedroom. I had to look like a disheveled—
“You’re thinking too hard again, babe.”
I laughed at that, stopped hiding against his shoulder, and kissed him, morning breath and all. And it was wonderful.
Mark playfully pressed his pelvis toward mine and realized that the sun wasn’t the only thing that rose that morning.
“Again?” I asked, not entirely sure how I’d like him to answer.
I really wanted a shower and an enormous cup of coffee. We had, after all, been up quite a bit of the night, and I was sure I looked terrible with day old make-up and raccoon eyes. We’d been a bit too busy for me to wash it off.
I suddenly didn’t give a damn because he didn’t give a damn. He wanted me anyway.
With a growl, he kissed the spot where my shoulder meets my neck. I was always so ticklish, I couldn’t help but giggle. “Seriously, Mark. I’m not sure I’m up to it again.”
He pressed against me and gave me a naughty smile. “I’m up to it.”
“I can see that. Do you want me walking around bowlegged all day?”
Another kiss on the same spot elicited another giggle. “Fine. Later then. I could use some coffee anyway.”
He threw the sheet and blanket aside and walked gloriously undressed toward the bathroom, his erect cock bobbing with each step. I hoped he hadn’t heard my appreciative and entirely immature sigh. That ass was perfection. Hard muscle. Flawless. So was his front. I could actually feel myself blush just admiring him and thinking how much he looked like some gorgeous Calvin Klein model.
How in the hell had I made a man that looks like that want me?
You’re thinking too much, Jackie.
When he came strolling back from the bathroom, I jerked the sheet up to hide my own nudity. The cover of darkness had taken away some of my normal timidity, but the morning light made all of my imperfections way too obvious.
Reaching into his duffle, Mark pulled out some clean boxers. My stars, I loved a man who wore boxer shorts. There was simply nothing attractive about tightie-whities. At least I had always thought so, until I pictured Mark in a pair. Yeah, I’d have to rethink that whole notion. Of course, Mark would be sexy in a potato sack.
He took a seat on the edge of the bed and gently ran his hands over my shoulders. I squeezed my arms hard against my side to hold the sheet up under my armpits. He ran a finger across my collarbone, tucked it between my shrouded breasts, and deftly pulled the sheet down. I squealed and reached for the blanket, but Mark grabbed my shoulders and held me back. Then—with a slow and deliberate gaze—he stared at my body. I could literally feel my blood warm to his perusal. I closed my eyes, not wanting to see his reaction, knowing my breasts weren’t nearly as firm as I wished, that my waist had all but disappeared with time, and that those stretch marks two pregnancies had left on my lower abdomen hadn’t faded as much as I had always hoped.
“You’re so beautiful.”
My eyes snapped open as I framed some sarcastic retort. “Yeah, right, and—”
His kiss stopped the sour words. Not a simple kiss, but the kind he had drugged me with last night. The man was as addictive as meth.
As he pulled away, I cupped his cheeks in my hands. “Wow.” I forgot all about the sheet.
A smug smile crossed his lips. “Two choices. You get up, get dressed, and have some breakfast with me—or I pick you up and carry you into the kitchen, and we eat naked.”
“I’d hate to have you see me naked and ruin your appeti—”
He kissed me before I could finish the sentence. The man refused to let me say anything derogatory about myself. He had entirely disarmed me. A long kiss later, I nodded, got out of bed, and grabbed my abandoned clothes. Messy hair and all, I sat across the kitchen table from Mark and ate the omelet he made.
While he cleaned up the aftermath of our meal, I popped in the shower and then got dressed. The air had a definite chill, and I shivered as I fished my blow dryer out of my duffle bag. I figured my typically uncooperative hair would make me look an awful lot like Buckwheat, so I dried it and arranged it best I could since I forgot my hair gel.
I was shaking a little bottle, preparing to slap on a heavy layer of foundation when Mark came up behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. He put his chin on my shoulder and smiled at me in the mirror.
“Don’t bother, babe. You’re prettier without it. No one around but me, and I love you just the way you are.” I could see the anticipation, the longing in his eyes.
I love you.
Damn it all anyway.
Mark had said the three words that could send me running faster than a fox being chased by a hound. A man’s love never brought me anything but heartache. Why couldn’t we just have fantastic sex and not muddy the water with declarations of things he didn’t really feel?
That guard of mine snapped right back into place, bringing with it the sarcasm that was its constant companion. “You sound like Billy Joel.”
His reflection frowned back at me, and he squeezed my waist almost too tight. “You don’t have anything to say to me?”
I love you too. More than you could possibly know.
But the man was going to stand there for a very, very long time if he was expecting me to lay my heart bare simply to have it shredded and handed back to me on a platter.
David had taught me a brutal lesson that I intended never to forget. Men confuse love and lust. They say the former when they really mean the latter.
No, thank you. I wasn’t going through that again. I wasn’t about to tell him how I felt. I would get hurt.
“Jackie?” Those brown eyes were getting darker. I’d forgotten Mr. Yummy had a temper. Judging from his expression, I was just about to find out to what extent that temper could flare. “After what I said, don’t you want to say anything?”
I shoved my make-up back into the case without applying any. “I know. How about we go for a hike? Maybe we can see some deer.”
Mark turned around so fast he almost knocked me over.
I reluctantly followed him into the bedroom, hoping there wouldn’t be a storm.
Grabbing his duffle bag, he muttered under his breath the whole time he pulled out clean clothes and threw them on the still unmade bed. I couldn’t catch everything he was saying, but I sure got the gist of it.
I was cold. I was unfeeling. I was stubborn.
Gee, Mark. Haven’t we met before? I’m Jackie Delgado. The most stubborn woman you’re ever likely to know.
“I’m not cold,” I finally grumbled. I rooted around in my bag for my birth control pills. Not that I’d need them anymore.
Mark took his clothes into the bathroom and slammed the door hard enough to make the pictures on the wall jiggle. I decided I needed to put some space between us for a little while.
I tugged on my boots, grabbed my jacket, and set out for a long, long walk. I needed to clear my head, and I needed some fresh air. If I didn’t get the hell out of there, he was going to wear me down. I was going to confess all that I felt, and I was going to get hurt again bec
ause he couldn’t truly love me.
Even though most of the trees had shed their leaves, the woods were still beautiful. I loved the tall trees, the autumn sunlight, and the clean smell of outdoors. I hiked hard and breathed deeply, hoping to untangle the mess of thoughts that were weighing on me.
Now what?
I knew I loved the guy—had almost started loving him from the moment he pulled his car over on our first date to scold me. I’d loved him from the moment he slid that butter across the table when I’d pushed it out of my reach. I’d loved him from the moment he first kissed me.
I brushed away a few tears and damned myself for forgetting my iPod. Without music blaring in my ears, all I could do was think.
His voice echoed in my head. “You’re thinking too hard again, babe.”
Sorry, Mark. It’s what I do.
I began to list the reasons why he couldn’t possibly love me.
“I’m past my prime.” Okay, that was bullshit. Last night proved it.
I’d never enjoyed making love so much. I’d never felt my body respond so readily and so warmly before. It was the best sex of my life. I might have always joked that I looked old, but I had to honestly admit I wasn’t that bad. No gray. No major wrinkles. I might not be model thin, but I wasn’t exactly ready for a gastric by-pass either. My intellect was as sharp as a chef’s boning knife, and I could still make people laugh when I tried. I had a lot of good years left.
Maybe Mark appreciated all those qualities.
I tried again. “He still loves Elaine.”
That wasn’t a good reason. It wasn’t as if I should have expected him to walk away from her grave and act like she had never been a part of his life. If he was like that, I couldn’t possibly love him. Mark had room in that huge heart of his to keep her memory and still be with me. Last night proved that too. I refused to give in to the nagging voice that whispered, “It was just lust.” It wasn’t just lust. Mark and I had connected on a very special, very emotional level. Of course, he still loved Elaine. But he could love me, too.
The devil’s advocate in me refused to shut up. Your personality will wear him out. It’ll kill his love just like it killed David’s.
Then it hit me hard and fast. I hadn’t killed David’s love for me—David had.
His mid-life crisis had been more important to him than I’d been, than our marriage had been. It was my own insecurity that wanted to blame me. It wanted to blame my boisterous nature, my changing body, and my domineering personality. What did those have to do with David’s need to feel young again, to fuck a girl young enough to be his daughter?
Not a single, solitary thing.
“It wasn’t all my fault,” I said to the trees. Then I shouted it. “It wasn’t all my fault!” I suddenly felt free.
Mark’s voice sang in my head. “I love you just the way you are.”
Had he meant it?
Could Mark possibly love me as much as I loved him?
Because, God help me, I did. I loved him more than my own life. I wanted to wake up with him every morning exactly the way I had today. I wanted to fall asleep snuggled up with him every night. I wanted to grow old and wrinkled with him. Visions of grandchildren floated through my emotionally overwrought brain, grandchildren we would share and spoil.
“But am I brave enough to tell him?” That was a tougher question, so I decided to ponder that while I hiked a little longer.
I glanced up to the sound of an obviously active woodpecker. That moment of inattention was more than enough for a clumsy person like me. My friends liked to joke that I could trip over the crack of dawn. My ankle rolled as I trod over a tree root. I was sprawled on the ground before I really knew what happened.
The sharp pain in my ankle stole my breath away and brought tears to my eyes. On my hands and knees, I flopped over to sit on my butt as I felt the ankle already beginning to swell inside the boot.
Damn. Damn. Double damn.
Desperately wanting to take the boot off to relieve the increasing pressure, I resisted the misguided urge. I struggled to remember the right things to do for a badly sprained ankle.
The same thing had happened to me when David was in college, sometime after Patrick was born, but before we had Nate. That was so long ago it was hard to bring it all back. We’d been walking to one of David’s intramural basketball games, and I had tripped where grass met sidewalk. He helped me into the gym, propped my foot on a chair, and played his stupid game. Then he drove me to the E.R. That much I remembered.
But the only thing I could recollect about treating the injury was that it took several hours to get an expensive x-ray only to be told my ankle wasn’t broken and there really wasn’t much they could do.
Ice and elevate. Hard to do when you’re sitting on the ground in the middle of the woods with no way to get back to civilization.
I didn’t want to cry, but no one was around, so I indulged myself for a couple of minutes. Wiping away the tears, I straightened my spine and tried to think of what to do.
I needed something to use like a crutch. I let my gaze scan the area. Nada.
“Damn it.”
My ankle throbbed in time with my rapidly beating heart, swelling until I was sure the boot would split open.
“Jackie? Where are you?”
I couldn’t believe it. Mark had come looking for me. I shook my head to make sure it wasn’t just some hallucination brought on my pain and frustration. “Over here! I need some help!”
Hearing his footsteps, I shouted again.
He came jogging up. He skidded to a halt in front of me and crouched down. “Jackie! What happened?”
“I sprained my stupid ankle,” I said, feeling clumsy and more than a little embarrassed. I’d run away from the cabin like some stupid kid. “I twisted it on that.” I pointed at the offending tree root. I winced when he touched the boot.
“It’s swollen already,” he said, giving my thigh a pat. “Not good.”
Knowing he sure didn’t deserve the sharp edge of my tongue, I bit back a sarcastic retort to his statement of the obvious. “Yeah. It hurts like hell.”
“I’m going to have to carry you.”
Snorting, I shook my head. “You’ll get a hernia.”
His responding snort didn’t sound at all like amusement.
I looked into his eyes.
Oh, yeah. Mark’s temper was full flight.
“You sure know how to piss me off, you know that? You’re a piece of work, lady.”
I could have given back as good as I was getting, but I was smart enough to realize I deserved his anger. I just bit my tongue and sat there.
He ran his hand from knee to ankle. “Nothing looks broken, but I haven’t seen that ankle yet. I hate to take the boot off. If I—”
“I know. I know. If you take it off, you’ll never get it back on. Look, you can’t carry me.”
“So help me, God, if you say something about your weight—”
“I could weigh as much as Carly, and it still wouldn’t work.” Mark seemed to be reining in his anger, so I tried to explain. “It’s just too far. We need to find something I can use as a crutch.”
Before I could protest, he reached down, gripped my hands, and pulled me to my feet. Well, at least to my foot—my good foot.
He turned his back and bent his knees. “Put your arms around my neck. We’ll piggyback.”
“Mark, you can’t—”
“Jackie,” he said before he took a deep breath. I thought I heard a slow count of ten. “Put your arms around my neck.”
“Fine,” I snapped before I did as he asked.
He put his hands behind my knees and pulled me on his back. After he got me settled, he began to hike back toward the cabin.
“Let me know if you need to put me down.”
“If I put you down, it’ll be in the damn lake. Cool that hot Spanish temper.”
“Now we’re resorting to ethnic insults?” I was growing a little angry at the im
plication that this was all my fault. He was the one who said those three stupid words that started this whole mess. “It’s your fault I got hurt.”
He skidded to a stop. I heard a ten count again.
This whole situation suddenly seemed horribly amusing. I bit my bottom lip to keep from laughing.
Funny—whenever David and I would fight, it got ugly. Fortunately, it was never physical, although I was known to throw a knick-knack or two at his head, and I had a nasty door slamming habit. Mark and I were, for all intents and purposes, fighting. But all I wanted to do was laugh.
“You’re damn lucky the lake is the other direction,” he said with a note of humor to his voice. He started walking again.
“Damn lucky,” I said with a chuckle.
It didn’t take long at all to get us back to the cabin. I had to admire that type of strength.
Mark set me down in the main room, and I hopped on my good foot until I let myself fall into the chair. He was immediately there, taking a seat on the coffee table and propping my injured foot on his lap.
Slowly untying the laces, he slid my boot off as I dug my fingers into the arms of the chair and sucked in my breath. He gently ran his fingers over the ankle that appeared to be about the size of a softball. “I really need to take the sock off. Or do you want to do it?”
“None of the above?” My whole leg throbbed from knee to toes. “Can’t I at least have a stiff drink first? Bite on a leather strap or something?”
He laughed, the sound rumbling in that broad chest, making me smile despite the pain. “I’ll be gentle.” And he was. He made a pained face when he looked at my foot. “Ouch. Already bruising. That’s going to be pretty ugly in a couple of days. You should probably have it x-rayed.”
“Nah. It’s not broken. Just sprained. Is there any ice in the freezer?”
“I’ll check.” Mark started to get up, but I reached out and grasped his elbow. “What?”
“I’m sorry, Mark. I–I shouldn’t have run out like that. I knew I’d pissed you off, and I just needed to get some fresh air. I wanted to give us some space.”
