The Stranger and Tessa Jones

by Christine Rimmer

  “Well, good.” She reached for the plastic container of chicken and started to rise.

  He caught her wrist—but gently, that time. “Leave it for a few minutes. Talk to me.”

  “Bill, really, it’s late…”

  He gestured toward the dark windows around them. “Come on. Live dangerously. You know you can sleep late—all day, if you want. Hear that wind?” It sighed and whistled around the eaves. And the snow was still coming down, piled over the sill out there, a few inches up the pane. “We’re stuck in this house, at least for tomorrow. You can spend the day doing whatever you please.”

  Slowly, as if she doubted the wisdom of hanging around, she sat back in the chair. “Well, all right.”

  He asked, “What should we talk about?” though the question was purely rhetorical. He knew what he wanted to talk about: her. And her family. And that store she said she owned on Main Street. About her friends. About her hopes and her dreams.

  But Tessa had other ideas. “What were you dreaming about?”

  He frowned. “Dreaming?”

  “This last time, when you woke up drenched in sweat and moaning, ‘No’?”

  “Oh. That.”

  “Yes. That.”

  “I…” The headache, sleeping for a time, awoke in his head again. It began pounding faintly. He set himself the task of ignoring it. “Falling,” he said. “I was falling.”

  “Falling, where?”

  “I don’t know. Out of the sky, I think—yeah. Out of the sky.” He touched his temple, felt the wound there.

  “Bill. Is your head hurting?”

  If he told her it was, she’d insist he go back to bed. “No. Really. It’s fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. There was…I think my family was there. For a while. Before the falling, I mean.”

  A smile lit her amazing face. Really, he could stare at her forever. She had the kind of face a man could look at every day for the rest of his life.

  “Oh, Bill.” Her voice held so much hope and wonder. “You remember your family?”

  He shut his eyes, breathed in through his nose, let the air out slowly. The headache, which hadn’t really gotten going this time, seemed to be receding. “It just seemed like…yeah. I think I was dreaming about my family. But now…”

  “What?”

  “It’s gone. I can’t remember.”

  She made a soft, sympathetic sound. “It’s okay. It will come.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “Right.” And he was the one getting up then. He grabbed his empty plate and his glass and took them to the sink.

  She rose, too, and started putting stuff away. He stuck the dishes in the dishwasher and then he straightened and stared out the window over the sink. Not that he could see out. What he saw was his own reflection, darkly, and wondered, Who the hell are you?

  “Hey…” Her gentle voice in his ear, her soft hand on his shoulder.

  He laid his hand over it. “It’s okay. I’m okay…”

  She asked, “Funny how we both keep telling each other everything’s fine, huh?”

  He turned and he was facing her and he couldn’t stop himself. He reached for her. And the greatest thing happened. Instead of pushing him away, she wrapped her arms around him, good and tight. He buried his face in her neck and breathed in the perfect scent of her. He thought that maybe, if he never let her go, everything would be all right, somehow. If he held on forever, it wouldn’t matter that he was a man without a name or any memory of his own life. She would be his life. She would be all he needed. From that night onward.

  “I’m so damn scared,” he whispered.

  “I know.” She squeezed him tighter. “I’m here. Right here with you.”

  He pressed his lips to her throat, once and then again. And then he was trailing a row of kisses, up over her chin to her mouth. She sighed as he kissed her and she didn’t try to pull back.

  He reveled in the moment. But he did know she had doubts. Yeah, he was shameless when it came to her. Not shameless enough, though, to lead her somewhere she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.

  In time, with dragging regret, he lifted his head. He took her by the shoulders. “We should get back to bed, huh?”

  She studied his face, as if she couldn’t stop seeking the answers she knew he didn’t have. Finally, she nodded. “Yeah. Guess so.” She felt for his hand. “Come on.”

  He followed where she took him, to her bedroom, where the sheets were clean and dry, the covers folded back, ready for him. All at once, he was so tired. Drained. Wrung out.

  Gently, she guided him down to the mattress. He swung his feet up, without even the energy to get out of the purple sweats. She took off the socks, peeling them away, her warm fingers brushing his left ankle, her palm against his right sole.

  She tossed the socks on the rocker in the corner. He saw the black boxers were there, too, hanging over the back. She must have brought them up from the basement when she went to get the sheets.

  “Lie down,” she told him. He obeyed and she tucked the blankets around him. “There,” she said tenderly, as if he were a child.

  He knew he’d kept her awake long enough. Regretfully, he said the words that would release her. “Good night.”

  And that was when the lights went out.

  Chapter Six

  “Don’t be afraid.” Her voice, so close, out of the dark.

  “It’s okay,” he said wryly. “I’m getting used to being in the dark. The lights might as well be out, too.”

  She chuckled. “Well, if we’re lucky, in a minute or two, the power will come back on.”

  They waited. Without the clock, it was hard to tell how much time passed.

  Finally, he heard her open a drawer in the nightstand. A moment later, a flashlight’s beam cut the darkness. “I’ve got candles,” she said. “And a few lanterns. And even a small generator in the basement that’ll run the fridge and a couple of lights, if it comes to that.”

  “Sounds good.”

  “I’ll just get you a lantern, then—so if you need light, you’ll have it.”

  “A flashlight will do for the rest of the night, if you’ve got a spare.”

  “Sure. There’s one in the kitchen. Be right back.” She started to turn.

  He had a brilliant idea. “Unless…”

  “What?”

  “Well. Why don’t you just stay here for the rest of the night?”

  She was frowning, her expression clearly visible even in the leftover spill from the flashlight’s beam. “Here?”

  He put up a hand like a witness swearing an oath. “I promise not to try and put the make on you—at least not until daylight.”

  Was she blushing? Maybe. “But I…” She paused to marshal her arguments.

  He didn’t give her the chance. “Think about it. Why go up and down the stairs in the dark to check on me when you can just stay here?”

  She sank to the edge of the bed. “Well, I don’t know. It just, um, seems like the best way…”

  “Sleeping, Tessa. That’s all we’ll be doing.” He held back the blanket enough that she could see he was fully dressed. “Me in these fine purple sweats and you in your snowman PJs. It’s not a big deal, is it?”

  She blew out a breath. “Not when you put it that way.”

  “So great. Come on.” He patted the other side of the bed. “Stay here where you can keep an eye on me.”

  She made a low sound in her throat. “Yeah, well. You need keeping an eye on, that’s for sure. In more ways than one.”

  He held her gaze for a moment. Then whispered, “Stay.”

  At last, with a shrug, she surrendered. He watched her, the flashlight beam leading the way, as she circled the bed to the side nearest the window. “Hold this.” She gave him the flashlight, dropped her slippers to the floor and climbed in, settling back on the pillow, her gold hair spilling across the white cotton pillowcase.

  Tessa in bed with him.

  Did it
get any better than this?

  She turned her head his way and wrinkled her nose at him. “All set. You can turn off the light now.”

  He really would have liked just to watch her lying there for a few minutes more. But she might get nervous if he did and start imagining he would try and jump her bones, in spite of his promise not to. So he switched off the light, put it in easy reach on the nightstand and stretched out beside her in the dark.

  There was stillness between them. The sweet scent of her came to him, faintly. He shut his eyes. The mattress shifted slightly with the weight of her body. He drank in the soft, wakeful sound of her careful breathing.

  Outside, the wind continued to sing under the eaves. He felt…peaceful. At peace in a way he hadn’t been in the longest time.

  He opened his eyes and stared into the darkness. The longest time? How long was that? He felt like a baby in so many ways. As if he’d been born only yesterday. At the same time he knew that, somewhere within him, the man he had been all the years of his life until now was waiting. He knew that his deeper, older self had rarely, if ever, been at peace in the way he was at this moment, in bed in the dark with the right woman beside him.

  He knew he should let her sleep. But there was just too much he needed to know. “Tessa?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You should tell me a story—a bedtime story.”

  “Bedtime?” Her voice was throaty and sweet and threaded with humor. “It’s way past your bedtime, Bill. It’s got to be after four.”

  “So what? Live dangerously. Tell me a story.”

  “A story about what?”

  “I don’t know.” But he did know. “Your family. Tell me a story about your family.”

  She sighed. “I wouldn’t know where to begin. My family is…something else.”

  He waited. He could tell by the smile in her voice when she spoke that she had plenty of stories about her family. She only needed a minute or two to choose one.

  Eventually, she did. “My Grandpa Oggie came to North Magdalene way back in the fifties and married my grandmother, Bathsheba Riley. They had four children—three wild, crazy, bad-acting Jones boys, one of whom is my dad. And one small, gorgeous, black-haired daughter, my Aunt Delilah.”

  He knew where she was headed. “And this is a story about Delilah Jones.”

  “It is. She’s a schoolteacher, my aunt. And she was famous for miles around as a real man-hater. Nobody blamed her for hating men. My grandma, Bathsheba, died when Delilah was only eleven, leaving her with my troublesome grandpa, who ran the local bar.”

  “That would be The Hole in the Wall, right? I noticed it when I rode through town.”

  “The very one. And when Grandpa Oggie wasn’t driving Aunt Delilah crazy with his smelly cigars and other totally annoying habits, there were her three bad-acting brothers to take up the slack. My dad and his brothers drank and fought and gambled their way through their teens and twenties. That house they all lived in growing up was a nightmare for Aunt Delilah, who was the only female around from such a young age and who spent way too much of her childhood trying to live a normal life, with her brothers coming in at all hours, drunk and swearing, half the time bleeding from some fight or other they’d been in—and expecting her to patch them up. It’s really no surprise that she wanted nothing to do with a man once she finally got out on her own. She hardly dated. Folks in town all said there was no hope for her on the marriage front—mainly because she didn’t want to get married. She had no plans to give up her pleasant single life. Why would she, when she’d only end up taking care of some man again?”

  “Okay, so who was he when he came along?”

  “Don’t rush me, now. It’s no fun if you rush it.”

  He laughed and dared to move his hand under the covers until he felt her flannel sleeve. He gave it a tug.

  “Watch it,” she warned.

  “Couldn’t resist.”

  “Oh, yeah, right. So anyway. By the time Aunt Delilah was in her thirties, Grandpa Oggie was starting to freak. He couldn’t stand the idea of his only daughter being single and never giving him any grandkids. My grandpa, he’s real big on love and marriage. And on grandkids—having them, I mean. Not taking care of them or anything. He’s not a babysitting kind of grandpa.”

  “Tessa.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Back to Sam and Delilah…”

  “Right. Um, so, about then, while Grandpa’s stewing over who he’s gonna set Delilah up with, along comes Sam Fletcher, who’s lived in town for fifteen or twenty years by then and owns his own store.”

  “Wait a minute.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Sam. Delilah. Not their real names, right?”

  “Real. True. Swear on my life. And he even cut off all his long hair for her, though eventually he grew it back again. But I’m getting ahead of myself—now, Sam, see, he was almost more like a Jones than a real Jones. He was friends with my dad and my uncles, he’d had a history of wildness, drinking and brawling and gambling and such. So around the time my Grandpa starts trying to decide who to set Delilah up with, Sam strolls into the bar and confides in my grandpa that he wants a wife.”

  “And your grandpa decides to get him and Delilah together.”

  “Oh, yeah. My grandpa, as usual, had no shame about it. He bribed, he begged, he coaxed, he threatened. And at first, Sam wasn’t going for it. But somehow, once Sam started thinking about Aunt Delilah as a woman, he…couldn’t stop. He really had his work cut out for him, though, because she’d never liked him and considered him just more of the same in the bad-acting man department…”

  Over on his side of the bed, Bill let his eyes drift shut again as he listened to the story of how Sam Fletcher set out to win the man-hating schoolteacher, Delilah Jones. It was quite a tale and included all the gambling and brawling and drinking the men in Tessa’s family were apparently famous for.

  “And then,” Tessa finished softly in a voice of wonder and feminine satisfaction, “Sam scooped Delilah high in his arms and carried her out of The Hole the Wall with half the town watching, all whooping and hollering, thrilled at the glorious sight. They married soon after and they’ve been together ever since…” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “And I bet you’re sound asleep by now.”

  He felt really smug. “Wrong. Great story.”

  “Why, thank you.”

  “But the part where he sweeps her off her feet and carries her out of the bar. That didn’t really happen, did it?”

  “It most certainly did,” she said sharply.

  He couldn’t resist teasing, “You sure?”

  She made a small, huffing sound. “I’ll have you know that a lot of people were there and saw Sam carry her away. It happened just like I said.”

  “You love that part, don’t you?”

  A silence. Then, “So shoot me. I think it’s romantic.”

  “Ah. Well, all right—and now Sam and Delilah have been married forever and they’re still going strong.”

  “That’s right.”

  “How many kids?”

  “Well, that was the rocky part for them.”

  “No kids?”

  “They wanted them. So bad. They tried and tried, but Aunt Delilah didn’t get pregnant. Then, finally, about ten years ago, they adopted. And then she did get pregnant, after all. It was almost like, once they adopted their son and stopped trying so hard, nature took its course. So they have two. A boy and a girl. Ben and Daisy.”

  “That’s good.” He felt absurdly satisfied that Sam and Delilah’s dream of a family had, in the end, come true.

  She asked, “And can we please go to sleep now?”

  “One last question.”

  “Oh, fine. What?”

  “You, Tessa…”

  “Yeah?”

  “Are you maybe a little like your Aunt Delilah?”

  “Me? Like my aunt? No way.” And then she asked, cautiously, “How do you mean?”

  “The tour bus
driver, the one whose name you say you can’t remember?”

  She groaned. “Ugh. What’s he got to do with anything?”

  “Well, the way you described him, he didn’t sound anything like the men in your family.”

  “He wasn’t.” Her voice was firm and sure. “Believe me.”

  “So, you’re afraid of wild, manly men, too—just like Delilah was. Lucky for you, I’m not wild.”

  She muffled a sound and he knew she was stifling a laugh. “I notice you didn’t say you’re not manly.”

  “Here’s a tip. Any man who tells you he’s not manly? Run from him. Run away fast.”

  “Thanks,” she said drily. “And no, I’m not afraid of wild, manly men. I’m just…not interested. But I haven’t given up on men altogether.”

  “Whew.”

  “I’m serious, Bill.”

  “Oh, so am I.”

  “I…well, if you have to know, I go for the guy in the corner.”

  He wasn’t following. “The corner of what?”

  “You know, the guy who’s sitting by himself, nursing a beer at the end of the bar. The quiet guy, who may not be all that good looking. The guy who’s kind of shy with women.”

  He faked a snore.

  “No, I don’t find men like that boring, thank you very much.” She made a sniffing sound. “I find them…sweet.”

  “Tessa.”

  “What?”

  “You find them boring. And safe. And they pick up on that. But by then, you’ve built their confidence a little. So they go out and find someone who really likes them.”

  She groaned. “Now I have a question.”

  “Hit me with it.”

  “So you think maybe you’re actually a shrink?”

  He frowned at the dark ceiling. “Doubtful. Why?”

  “Because that was…some analysis.”

  “Just an observation, that’s all.”

  “I’ll have you know I’m working hard right this minute to drum up a little outrage. I mean, do you hear what you’re telling me? You’re saying I don’t even really like the guys I think I like. I should be so offended.”

  “But you’re not.”

  “No.” She sounded more than a little puzzled. “You’re right. I’m…not.”